Sydney

The next day I was full of beans, even if slightly disgruntled by the fact that I had to share the shower-room with other men.  No-one caught sight of my willy that first morning, but in the back of my mind I knew that it would just be a matter of time.  This sort of thing is very  disconcerting to someone with a Small One. That's all I'm going to say on the subject. 

Where was I? Oh yes, we took the underground train to Circular Quay. A word here on the Underground. First of all, they have fabulous roomy DOUBLE-DECKER carriages. Cool huh? Then they go and spoil it by hiding all the helpful signs. I'm not kidding. I'm sure they have a guy they pay to go around stuffing directions, station names, route maps and line diagrams round corners, in little nooks and down bogs so that the hapless traveller has about as much idea of where he is at any time as Amelia Earheart over the Pacific. 

The result was that me and Caro spent an inordinate amount of time running down stairs, up escalators, through passages, waving our tickets about and cursing to ourselves. Even though there are half the number of lines, I would say the London Tube is a lot easier to negotiate. 

However, it's kind of worth it when the train slides into Circular Quay station and you look up and - HOLY MODERN LANDMARKS - there's the Opera House and Harbour Bridge just sitting there all cool and sort of saying, "What? You were expecting the Eiffel Tower maybe?" 

Caro and me walked around to the bridge, towards the area referred to as "The Rocks". It's very cool and cosmopolitan feeling around there. I was surprised to hear very few Aussie accents and the feeling was more like Singapore. If it hadn't been for the cuddly koalas with cork hats that adorned every souvenir stand I could have forgotten where we were. (Also for the tourist CD's including songs such as "Waltzing Matilda", "Tie Me Kangaroo Down" and "Where The Dog Sits on the Tuckerbox"). 

We had an overpriced sandwich (We're TOURISTS! Rip us off!! Please!!) and then wandered over to the Opera House, which damn me - looks more like it GREW there than was built. It IS pretty amazing. Close up, you can see how the various bits and pieces fit together to create the overall effect, but that emphasises, not diminishes the wonder of the thing. 

However, I do think it could do with a bit of a scrub. 

Really. As a Wonder of the Modern World, is it a bit much to ask that they send some little man up there with a weegee and a bucket of Dot? The whole thing kind of has that yellowy tinge, reminiscent of a smelly labrador's molars. Mind you, it was COMPLETELY overshadowed by the Harbour Bridge, which is incredibly impressive, especially when you see those little figures halfway up. Yes, you can climb the Harbour Bridge yourself for just $90. It looked INCREDIBLY thrilling and exciting and strenuous to me and completely out of our budget, thank god. Feona Lindsay told us that we HAD to climb the Harbour Bridge, but I feel I should put her straight on this:

People HAVE to: 
Brush their teeth before bedtime 
Buckle up on every trip 
Eventually die 

They do NOT have to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge. In fact, I can think of no good reason why ANYONE should climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge. So we just took pictures of it instead. Afterwards, Caro had found for us the "Crime and Justice Museum" to go around. Not only was this pretty interesting and cheap, it also involved NOT climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which is always a bonus.   After this, we returned to our hostel feeling flat-out and touristy.  I slept heartily.  “You’ve turned into a slug,” observed Caro.