A Very Sydney Weekend

No trip to Australia is complete without a stop in the country’s most prominent city, Sydney. I learned this at an early age thanks to Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s film Our Lips Are Sealed, which is jam-packed with kangaroo household pets, vegemite initiations and other Aussie stereotypes. What the film failed to mention, however, is what an interesting and historically rich city Sydney actually is. Thanks for nothing, girls.

 This weekend excursion actually counted as a class trip, though to my dismay we had to pay for our own plane tickets. We arrived as a group of about fifteen on a Thursday afternoon, and we were off to a rocky start. None of us had ever encountered a hostel before, so the dingy, unattractive style of our outdated rooms, clad in questionable bunk beds and peeling wallpaper was unsettling to us all, to say the least. But, we were determined to make the most of the weekend, so we dropped our bags in our ghastly hostel and headed out to explore.

We were quickly met with another challenge: Sydney’s weather was unforgiving, consisting of rain and dark clouds for the majority of our time spent in the city. August is typically a time for hot sun and beach days for a New Jersey resident, but winter in Australia is contrarily accompanied by cold rain. Luckily, not everyone minded the weather; as my friends and I turned the corner to walk up a city street, we came across a large patch of grass covered with wild cockatoos. I had previously thought that these majestic white birds with yellow-crested headpieces could only be found in pet stores, but to see these beautiful creatures flying about the city of Sydney (where I perhaps least expected to find them) was an experience all its own.

The next day—a rainy one of course—we met our professor at Circular Quay station for a walking tour of the city. Our tour guide was Sarah, a quirky older woman with a bland grey bob of hair and a bright red trench coat that I assume she wore in prevention of the group misplacing her. In her lispy Australian accent, she taught us that Sydney was the first British settlement, showed us some of the city’s oldest standing buildings, and even brought us to Sydney’s oldest pub where we conveniently ended the tour.

We had all day Saturday to ourselves, which we filled with shopping, eating, and a visit to Australia’s most famous beach, Bondi. That night, we walked around Darling Harbour, and I couldn’t help but feel like I was back in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, only a more grandiose version. There were restaurants on the water’s edge, bright lights reflecting off of the helms of many boats, and the skyline in the background. I absorbed this moment as feelings of both homesickness and pleasure in my current place filled me. Unfortunately, as all good things must end, early the next morning it was time to board a plane back to Dry Toast Township.

P.S. Don't think I forgot to take an embarrassing picture in front of the Opera House. What kind of tourist would I be if I had done such a thing?