thoughts on Sydney

A few random observations...

We almost didn't bother to go to the Sydney Fish Market, because we thought it would be like Tsukiji in Tokyo, where it's mostly worth going only to see the fish auction at sunrise. As it turned out, we were pleasantly surprised; there were lots of seafood shops inside selling yummy-looking food, and it was a picturesque area to hang out generally, although we did have to dodge lots of seagulls.

The Harbour Bridge is somewhat less impressive than I expected. It's pretty industrial looking, and walking over it gave us good, but not great views. I'm not sure why it's one of Sydney's premier sights. Anyway, as a result, we decided not to bother with the 3+ hour, $200/person bridge climb. Well, that and D's afraid of heights and I'd have had to drag him anyway.

We went ate at two excellent restaurants while in Sydney: Quay and Tetsuya's. Quay has an unbeatable location and the food is quite good too, but Tetsuya's is on another level. For one thing, the service is noticeably better. At Quay, the pacing of the courses was so slow that we were nearly falling asleep towards the end, and the service staff did not pick up on any cues to speed up, until I explicitly asked. (Although, to be fair, it does seem like the Australians spend longer eating than Americans. This was especially obvious to us coming from Korea, where the food would come so fast that we couldn't keep up.) Also, the food is more consistently "polished"; there were one or two dishes at Quay that were very creative, but I felt the ingredients did not come together well. Maybe that's why Tetsuya's is a harder reservation to get; we made ours in April and I heard from a friend that they were booked out by late May or early June, for our date in early September. More on the restaurants to follow...

Our tour to the Blue Mountains was a great change from the hustle and bustle of the city. We went with Boutique Mountain Tours because we read great reviews on TripAdvisor, and in fact we had a great time; there were only six people on our tour (I believe the max is 12) and our guide David managed to keep us ahead of and or away from the big tour groups, for the most part. He even found us kangaroos! We had an encounter with three kangas during which I of course took a billion photos, some of which we've already posted. Some friends took their Boutique Wine Tours to Hunter Valley, and they reported that they had a great time as well. Highly recommended.

Meat pies and pasties are yummy. Why don't we have them in the US? Australians also eat "mushy peas" which are like mashed potatoes but with peas instead of potatoes, and I like them very much.

Bondi Beach was surprisingly uncrowded for such a major tourist attraction, and the sand was fine and soft and amazingly clean. Actually all the beaches were quite nice; we walked from Bondi to Bronte, and stopped by Coogee as well.

Both Sydney and Seoul have painted bike lanes, for better visibility (green in Sydney, red in Seoul). I was thinking we should try that in the US, and maybe the roads would be slightly safer for bikers. Or not.

However, drivers in Sydney are terrible. D and I both nearly got run over a couple of times looking the wrong way (like the American tourists we are), and our guide David would regularly curse out other drivers, for good reason. All the road rage seems very counter to the normal Australian friendliness; for example, when we were walking the coastal trail, some random teenaged guys pointed out dolphins to us. We almost ignored them because really I'm just used to teenaged boys who only make stupid jokes, but it turned out to be one of the highlights of our walk.

Sydney has a Running Festival inspired by the Bay to Breakers! Theirs is longer (14km) but is similar in feel; a few competitive runners and otherwise just a big party. I guess the B2B must really be a big deal if other countries are imitating it.

There seems to be a culture of "chocolate cafes" in Sydney. I saw Guylian cafes, we went to a Lindt cafe, and there were others as well. At the Lindt cafe, the milk and the chocolate for the hot chocolate were served separately, so we could adjust to taste. It was delicious, with none of the dry aftertaste that I usually expect with hot chocolate.

We had a great time at the opera! (Yes, even D.) We had front row seats, which meant that we couldn't see the surtitles, but the story was Romeo and Juliet retold anyway, so it didn't matter much. The benefit was that we could see directly into the orchestra, which was fun. During the end of the second act, one of the French horn players was visibly falling asleep, which amused me very much.