Germans, Polish and French, Oh my!

On Wednesday I was happy to have my camera in working order again so I figured it was time to head out and get back to to taking pictures like crazy. I happened to be out on the perfect day as well for everything just worked out perfectly.

First off, when wandering up the street towards the bridge and opera house I noticed that there were two helicopters in the air just hovering. 'That's weird' I thought, but kept going anyways. Eventually I saw a third Heli move into formation and started to notice police officers all over the place and they had blocked off a huge Portion of George St. to traffic. Pedestrians were still aloud to go through, so I kept moving and figured it may have been some kind of big accident. In fact, it was the parade for all the Australian Olympic athletes. Good for me and being out at the right time. So I got a picture or two of all the Athletes lined up on the steps of town hall. I thought that was a stroke of luck that I was able to take that in.

Next up, I figured I would backtrack a bit and take a water-taxi from Darling harbour over to the Circular Quay and go to the Opera House from there. It would be a good view from the boat of both the bridge and Opera house. Well I had just missed a taxi and it would be half an hour before the next one. I was better off walking anyways. I cut a path through the parks around Darling Harbour and went over Pyrmont Bridge where I continued my trek northwards to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I didn't make it too far until I heard someone yell my name (even being fully aware that I don't know anyone here I looked anyways) and saw my buddy Adam, from the bus from Melbourne to here, waving at me from across the way. This worked out great since I hadn't seen him since our first night in Sydney and he didn't come out with Sandy and I on Monday night. I was now able to catch up with him and now that I have my cellphone we swapped numbers. Yay. He introduced me to his new friend, Christi, who hails from Vancouver. Then they both invited me on a small pub crawl. I could go see the Bridge anytime. I wanted to hangout with a friend instead. So we hit up some places. 3 wise monkeys and Cheers, Around this time Adam is getting a bit hungry and so was I. We headed over to Ali-Baba's (think of Subway only with Kebabs in a wrap. Great food.)

This food chain offers those scratch cards where you win free stuff so when we were in line for our food a girl comes up and gives me the card she just scratched for an order of free chips (fries) and says that if I want to I can keep them or share with her. Hmm, cute girl wants to share? Sure. We join her and the 2 friends she's sitting with and ask them their names and where they are from. The girl who gave me the free chips is Alexa from Poland, and her friends were Tina from Germany and Elody from France. Luckily for us Adam knew some German so he tried talking to Alexa and Tina as best as possible in their native language. I talked with Elody as best I could. She doesn't understand some of the words I use, but she got the gist of it for the most part. When we were about ready to set off Adam was saying goodbye when I give him a nudge and ask him if he knows how to ask the girls out for a beer in German. He didn't know all of it so we just asked if they'd be interested in getting a drink. Surprise, they said Yes. The 6 of us headed to Scruffy Murphy's and had a drink or two while getting to know each other. By the end of the night when they were turning in they asked us what we were doing the next day. We got invited to go on a bit of an adventure, a Walk from Manly to Spit bridge (a 3 hour walk as we learned later) and Alexa wanted to go to Bondi beach to see the Sunset. Heck, why not. They asked us to meet them at their hostel the next morning at 10:30am. Done and done. I made a note of it and we bid girls good night. Adam, Christi and I continued onto another pub which I didn't catch the name of and then back to the bar below my hostel. When we got there Adam was shocked to see the type of people that stayed here and asked me "How many friends have you made here?" to which I replied, "none really. Look at these people They aren't backpackers." Adam: "You need to switch hostels real soon. These aren't your type of people." I thought about it and he's right. Everyone here looks like they are ripped right out of a fashion magazine. I need to get back to the backpacker community like which I had when I was in Melbourne. We had a drink then called it a night, especially if we had to get up early the next day and meet up with the foreign girls.

The next morning I had to figure out the train system without the help of Sandy. Now this usually wouldn't be a problem, because most train stations only have 3 or 4 platforms. I'm lucky enough to be right beside Central Station which has 25 platforms of pure train goodness. After drifting from platform to platform looking at the different routes I finally find the one I need (platform 24 of course.) and proceeded to meet up with Adam in the Kings Cross area. We walked our way over to the girls hostel and waited....and waited... and waited some more.

By 11am I figured this was the girls way of standing us up. Adam kept telling me to have faith and he went in and asked the guy who runs the place if he knew where the German, Polish and French girl were staying. Not only did he tell him but he let Adam go bang on their door (I'm surprised he didn't just give us the key while he was at it.) The girls had overslept and Adam had the pleasure of waking them up. Apparently they still wanted to go do this, especially as how it was Alexa and Tina's last day in Sydney before Tina goes back to Rockhampton(where she lives with her boyfriend) and Alexa goes back to Germany (she goes to school there). Back to the waiting game. At 11:30am Elody comes out and gives us the customary kiss of the cheek good morning (I love France) and tells us that they're just going to have some breakfast. Being the gentlemen that we are we tell her to take her time and we'll wait outside. After another hour the girls finally join us outside and we are on our way. For the record it is now 12:30pm and Adam and I just spent 2 hours sitting on a sidewalk in the hot sun. I'm not sure if we're gentlemen, desperate, or that sad of people for waiting so long. The entire time I was assuming the worst and just figured they weren't interested in going with us. Adam told me to keep the faith and all will turn out well. His goal is to restore my faith in women.

We couldn't have chosen a better day. Not a cloud in the sky, a cool ocean breeze and it wasn't really hot out, just nice. We walked through the botanical gardens which come up behind the Opera House. Even got to see some Bats sleeping in the trees. We made our way to an area called "The Rocks" which is a touristy area which still has a lot of the old brick and stone buildings from long long ago. Adam tells me it's what Manchester looks like. We then caught a ferry at the Circular Quay (where all the ferries originate) and went to Manly. We started our walk which was supposed to be 3 hours but we eventually gave up about 2 hours in. Then became the search for the bus which would take us over Spit bridge and to the train station. We caught one bus and asked the driver where we had to go, He was so nice that he allowed us on without using our ticket (it's part of the whole transit system in Sydney for trains, buses and ferries) and told us when to get off and gave us directions to the next bus stop that would take us into town. What a friendly guy. We finally made it back to a section of town in the far north and got ourselves to train station and took the train over the Sydney Bridge into the central business district (where I'm staying) and switched trains to go to Bondi. After getting off in Bondi we had to take another bus (jeez) which took us down to the beach. We missed Sunset by about 30 minutes. We said our Goodbyes because Adam and I were going to get supper in Bondi while they were going back to their hostel to pack. Elody asked us for our phone numbers so we could get together and go out again soon seeming as how she's staying in Sydney for quite awhile. Yay, another friend.

I was so dead tired that I went to bed around 10pm.

Quite an adventurous last 2 days. Today is going to be a lazy day. I'm hoping tomorrow I'll get out to Paddy's Market and check out what they sell. It's supposed to be similar to the Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne. That wastes a few hours.