Sydney!

After my return down under, it didn't take me long before leaving Melbourne yet again. This time, we were headed to Sydney for the weekend, and I was ecstatic. Given that most locals are very loyal to Melbourne, I was told time and again that Sydney is a "nice place to visit, but not to live," so I set off to form my own opinion.

We arrived Friday night - it's just a quick one-hour flight from Melbourne to Sydney, so not even enough time to take a decent nap on the plane. We didn't want to get too crazy that night, after all we had a whole day of sight-seeing ahead of us on Saturday. So, we found a local place - disco lights, cheesy music, brightly-dressed Australians - the usual. We proceeded to get our groove thing on. The bouncer was very strict and protective of his dance floor. One step onto the polished hardwood with a drink-in-hand and you were in trouble. It started to become quite a fun game, seeing who could sneak a drink onto the dance floor without being caught.

Our original plan was to do a bit of sight-seeing the next day, but we were badly craving some beach time. It was already shaping up to be a beautiful day (Sydney weather is typically warmer than Melbourne weather, because they don't have the bay breeze like Melbourne does), so we made our way to the infamous surfer's haven of Bondi Beach. The houses set in the hilltop reminded me a little of the scenery on the Italian coast. The beach crowd was quite mixed - surfers, hippies, tourists, they came from all over.

We had a great time though! Engaged in a few hand-stand contests with our beach neighbors. Somewhere in life I learned how to walk on my hands across a room and back (Meg - remember when we used to do this in our living room in Peachtree City?!) - so I succeeded in winning the hand-stand contest. We also had a few Charlie's Angels poses, and some sort of flying karate chop that Carson is demonstrating to the right.

That evening was a tourist extravaganza. We got ready and headed over to the Sydney Harbour for a dinner cruise. Basically, an evening of dinner and live music on a nice little boat that took us up and down the Harbour - it was quite lovely! Before boarding, we managed to take some pictures of the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge (aka the Coathanger). According to Guiness World Records, this is the widest long-span bridge in the world. You can pay a lot of money to "scale" the bridge - i.e. walk on top with a tour guide. The bridge had its two-millionth climber back in August. I was making fun of all the scaling and climbing terminology until I actually saw the bridge and realized it probably would be quite a workout to walk on top of it.

The dinner cruise was great! Lots of good food, good champagne, and good music ala Dianna Ross look-alike. Later that evening, as we were parading down the streets of Sydney looking for our next locale, we managed to capture the essence of two very quality mullets sported by two very quality bouncers. You can kind of see them in the picture, but I don't think they are done proper justice. Mullets are actually fairly abundant down here. It's almost a comforting feeling when I see them, it takes me home to my southern roots.

Our final day in Sydney was filled by our last touristy mission. We had to see the Opera House - you can't visit, let alone think of Sydney without noting this infamous icon. It's quite the architectural structure, and has become one of the most famous performing arts venues in the world. Initially, we had wanted to see the Symphony play inside, but due to time constraints, we had to settle for just getting close and touching the building. It was still really awesome!

All in all it was a great weekend! Even though it was a short trip and I only got a taste of the city and the people, I would have to agree with the locals and say that I'd rather live in Melbourne and visit Sydney. But I'll definitely be visiting Sydney again one day!