Sydney

Another vacation come and gone! Boy, Australia is getting expensive. Mom and dad, please send more money. Oh yeah, I love you.

Spent the last extended weekend with the two French fries, Agnes and Maud, in Sydney, Australia’s largest city. It boasts a population of over four million—half a million more than Marvelous Melbourne. Sydney is a city for strong people: strong businessmen who drive cars with strong engines, strong surfers who show off their skills at the famous Bondi Beach, strong sailors who compete in the annual Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, and strong naked men in statues who fight minotaurs with one hand while turtles softly spew water in the foreground.

Despite the city’s outward strength and wealth, it lacked some X factor or vibrancy that the French fries and I spent some time trying to identify. We decided that the lack of college students and children, the huge Central Business District and the monoculture of all the businessmen, and the large amount of tourists lend the city a different feel than Melbourne. As many Melburnians will tell you, Sydney is a nice vacation destination, but it’s not as nice a place to live.

Not having enough time to do some proper research, I booked a hostel for the three of us in a place called “Kings Cross”, which sounded innocent enough. Actually, it’s Sydney’s red-light district, filled with shops of the most creative names and merchandise, and dotted with the best women that money can buy. Whenever we returned to our hostel late at night, we made sure to sober up before entering Kings Cross. And when the French fries locked themselves out of our hostel room, I only opened the door if they introduced themselves as another word for “night workers,” which according to Maud only strengthened the Australian perception that French girls are easy. Other than that, the location of our hostel didn’t really impact our trip.

Sydney does have some redeeming qualities, notably its numerous harbors, a certain Opera House, and the Harbour Bridge. Every architect seems to know this, as all the buildings competed for the best views of the harbor. Between the skyscrapers, the carefully maintained walkways, and the heavily landscaped gardens, I felt that central Sydney was overproduced. But enough whining. It made for some nice pictures.

The Opera House is by far the most stunning part of the city. It seemed like the three of us were always pulling our cameras out, putting them away, walking ten paces in any direction, and pulling them out again. The Opera House stands stoically in bad weather, shines in the sunlight, and glows at night. The “shells” that resemble sails or orange peels—depends on who you talk to—were thought to be impossible to build, but with enough money anything can happen. Construction went fourteen times over budget, but Sydneysiders now think it was worth it, and the rest of the world agrees.

Agnes and I felt quite overwhelmed with the beauty of the Opera House and let loose on the Monumental Steps.

I went on a tour inside, and found it to be disappointing overall compared to the exterior (except for the designer toilets, which were a religious experience). Most of the theaters and lounges look pretty typical, except for the largest Concert Hall, which seats less than three thousand people but has a huge organ (“Grand Organ” in these parts), leaving about four pipes per person.

Thought you might be interested to know that before the Opera House began construction in the 1960s, the site was being used as a tram shed. Back in those days Melbourne was the grandest city in Australia (it had temporarily become the wealthiest city in the world in the late 1800s, after the Gold Rush), and it had the honor of hosting the 1956 Olympics. This spurred Sydney to action, though the Opera House wasn’t completed until the mid 1970s. (In 2000 Sydney hosted the Olympics.)

Went to Bondi Beach, were I was the only swimmer without a surf board. Australia being more European than America, there are the occasional topless sunbathers. But I came during the wrong decade, because all the hot girls were skinny enough to look like prepubescent boys in speedos while lying down.

Because I don’t like Sydney as much as Melbourne, I’ll leave you with the fruit bats in the Botanic Gardens. I’ve seen these hideous messengers of the Devil in Melbourne and Cairns, but in Sydney Agnes and I were able to send them straight back to Hell by throwing seed pods at them for amusement—while the groundskeepers weren’t looking, of course. You know you’re in the wrong city when the premier art gallery features a sculpture in their likeness. Ughhh.