Australia! Part 2

Hello again! I'm back in Kochi, and ready to share the rest of the Australia trip. My brain's a little fuzzy, though, so I may have to ask Mom to contribute whatever bits I end up forgetting. So, Mom, if I leave anything out, feel free to add comments :D

Anyhow, our next thing on the agenda was Bondi Junction and Bondi Beach. Much to my initial confusion, "Bondi" is pronounced like "Bond-eye" rather than "Bond-ee". To get there, we needed to take two subway trains and a bus. It ended up taking two attempts. On the first day, we got as far as Bondi Junction and started off the morning by shopping. There's a fairly large shopping center at Bondi Junction, and we figured it would be better to do our shopping before we got all sunscreened and salt-encrusted. However, by the time we (well, I) had finished shopping, the buses to the beach were packed and there was a massive line waiting at the first station. Given the dire state of the public transportation, and the likely madness at the beach, we decided to give it another shot the next morning when it would hopefully be less crowded.

We ended up going to Bondi Beach the next day. Even going relatively early in the morning, the bus was still packed, though we were able to get on the first one that came. There were plenty of people at the beach, as well. It was a nice day and the surf wasn't crazy so we got to play in the water a bit. We also got some photos with one of the lifeguards, or "lifesavers" as they call them. Mom also got some shots of one of the lifesavers who is on a TV show about the beach. Both Mom and Dad know the show, but I haven't seen it.

Once we'd had as much sun as we could take for the day (which, admittedly, is not all that much) we headed back into town and got cleaned up. I think we spent the afternoon eating dinner and wandering around Darling Harbor, but I may have gotten our days mixed up. Since I wasn't really taking notes, the timeline gets a little hazy.

Other things we did in Sydney include more beach time at Rose Bay and Shelley Beach. We took a ferry to Rose Bay, which turned out to have a smallish beach. We hung around there for a while, and when it was time to return we discovered that there wouldn't be a return ferry for several hours. Oops. So we caught a bus back into the center of town. We also got to Shelley Beach by ferry; it was just off the tip of Manly Beach. Shelley Beach was relatively small but had nice, calm water. The sand itself had less of a brown-sugar texture (which a lot of the other beaches had) and was more, well, shell-y. It was nice enough there that we could paddle around a bit. There were a lot of families at that beach, and also snorkelers and some divers. We saw some water dragons (big lizards) on our walk to and from the beach. Shelley may have been my favorite beach since it was good for swimming and there was less of a crowd.

Aside from our time at the beach, we did a little more shopping, though not as much as at first. Even I had pretty much had my fill of shopping. I had already bought enough new clothing to fill a small duffel bag, the duffel bag also being an Australia purchase. We usually took a main expedition in the morning, relaxed for a bit in the afternoon, and wandered around in the late afternoon. There was some good food, although I didn't end up trying crocodile, emu or kangaroo.

Pretty soon it was time to leave Australia. Mom's flight left a day before mine, so we said our goodbyes Friday morning and she headed out to the airport. I checked out of the hotel a little later and moved to another hotel out by the airport since my flight left early on Saturday. On Saturday I flew from Sydney to Gold Coast to Osaka, took a bus from one airport to the other, and stayed at a hotel near the domestic airport. Then I flew back to Kochi this morning.

All in all, Australia was a pretty awesome trip. I enjoyed traveling with Mom, and there were so many cool things to see. There are still other parts of Australia I would love to see at some point, and I would happily go back to Cairns for some more snorkeling (though I would bring some Dramamine or something this time). Probably my favorite sights were the animals at the zoos. Australia has a lot of amazing animals. The duck-billed platypus is almost certainly my favorite, though I also liked the echidna, the cassowary and the Tasmanian devil. I'll have to post a few of our animal photos.

So, tomorrow (Monday) is a national holiday here, and then I go back to work. I'm glad to have one more day to settle in before I have to go back to school. Since my return trip was fairly broken up, I'm not feeling too exhausted, but I'm glad I've got a little time left to relax. Also to reheat my apartment... when I got back, it was freezing cold. But after having the air con running all afternoon, the heat is finally starting to seep from the kitchen into the tatami room. So it'll soon be a return to life as usual.