Week two: Sydney

My first week in australia was a bit of a whirl-wind experience. Between adjusting to jetlag, frequent hangovers, solo travel, and communal living (shared dorms in hostels), i hardly wound up having enough time to really explore the city! I did make it to Manly beach, Bondi beach, walked around the botanical gardens, saw the opera house (inside and out), shopped in the downtown core, strolled thru chinatown, and thru 'the rocks', and hung out at my hostel, the Pink House, in Kings Cross ("the red light district", but a pretty tame one.)

I would say the highlight of this part of my trip was two things.

First, making friends. I'll admit, I was ridiculously nervous about this. I actually had to call up all my courage the first time I stepped out into the pink-house-terrace in order to befriend complete strangers. But it turned out to be so easy! There were many long-termers at the Pink House, who were friendly enough but tended to stay in their groups. It was the short term stay-ers who were easiest to talk to, we seem to be the most willing to make that oh-so-annoying yet oh-so-neccesary travel small talk.

Travel small-talk is much like regular small-talk, only the questions are as follows;
Where are you from?
How long are you in australia / sydney?
Where have you been so far?
Where are you going next?

This will be followed by a series of questions related to how you answer those first four, such as: Oh, you've been to Adelaide! Where did you stay? and so on and so forth. And, much like normal life small-talk, it has become incredibly tedious to me already. But, a necessary evil.

The second best part of my week in Sydney was the Mardi Gras parade. Its name is a bit of a misnomer; it doesn't actually take place on or near fat tuesday, it's actually Sydney's pride parade! Like how the pride parade used to be in Montreal, it's quite a big parade, and since it is legal to drink in public in most places in Australia, it's teeming with drunk people of all ages wearing colourful clothes, wigs, elaborate costumes, or hardly anything at all! And of corse, part 2 was enhanced by part 1; the new friends with whom I was witnessing this wild event. And these people are some of the best people I have met so far on this trip; Rob (toronto), Becky and Matt (living in england), and Jo and Amenha (england, the ones in the wigs...).

One thing I quickly began to realize; I am unlikely to meet that many australians on this trip. But I WILL meet a ton of people from england, ireland, and then to a lesser extent germany, france, scotland, scandanavian countries, USA, japan...

Discoveries...
Food is crazy expensive, but you can get these wicked little sushi rolls for like 2-3$ a pop on any block. This is PERFECT traveller food; relatively healthy, cheap, filling, and you can eat it on the go!

Food may be expensive, but this is only due to the fact that most of the food comes from within Australia, and the people working on the farms and in the entire system are paid QUITE WELL. I heard min wage here is something like 12$. A local in Byron Bay told me that Australia doesn't have a huge poor working class like you see in North America. Take that, land of the free!!

Back to sushi: SUSHI TRAIN! Restaurants that have a continual conveyer belt of sushi going in a circle, you pick a plate or two or three, and after eating, you pay according to a color coordination system (blue plates = 2.50, green ones 3.00 and so on...)

Kinokuniya! THE MOST AWESOME BOOKSTORE EVER! So many awesome design, art, and architecture books, and then a whole Japanese books section, which is perfect for my love of japanese craft books, and definitely warrants a revisit before I leave back to Canada... so very, very rad.

Why did I bring running shoes?!! And two pairs of Jeans?! It's bloody hot in this country! Tops, shorts, and 'thongs' are all you need. and one nice pair of shoes for going out. Not kidding, this place has a stricter dress code than all of Montreal.

Australian women, at least in Sydney, are very well dressed, wear alot of dresses, and put me and my backpacker wardrobe to SHAME. So, teehee, I bought some clothes, which miraculously fit into my already-full backpack.