Down Under: Sydney

18 hours later...we arrived in Sydney, Australia, at 7:30am on Wednesday, the 13th. We were fortunate to be picked up at the airport by lovely Adele Buchanan, a friend who we went to high school with and is now living in Sydney working for Dell.

Sydney is a beautiful city with an abundance of greenery, water, quaint precincts, and 'heaps' (as our friend Adele likes to say) of classy high-rise condos and skyscrapers.

For Valentine's Day (which we celebrated a day before the States since Australia is 18 hours ahead), we visited the city business district (CBD), Darling Harbor, The Rocks, and Manly Beach. It was a wonderful day - the sun was out, the temp was in the upper 70s and we came across many wonderful sites and friendly people.

We started the day by taking the tram down to the Central Train Station in the CBD. We ventured into Chinatown during lunchtime and came across many dim sum and noodle houses. We ended up ordering a few chinese pastries at a popular bakery (yum!). Afterwards, we walked through the large open-air flea market, Paddy's Market, which is located right next to Darling Harbor. Darling Harbor is absolutely beautiful - the harbor is lined up with museums, condos, office buildings, shopping centers, restaurants and cafes - reminded us of Seattle. A monorail runs through it as well. From Darling Harbor, we walked towards the Harbor Bridge to The Rocks, an old historic precinct of Sydney. There, we came across many art galleries, cafes, historic pubs and upscale resturants. We took great pictures of the Sydney Opera House and the Harbor Bridge from The Rocks and witnessed 3 groups of bridge climbers (crazy people!).

The latter of the day was spent at Manly Beach. We took the 30-minute ferry from Circular Quay (located in b/w The Rocks and the Opera House) to Manly Beach. We really enjoyed Manly Beach because it reminded us of a quaint beach town you would find in southern California (i.e. Newport) and even the Oregon coast. The main road in Manly is called Corso Rd. Discounted shops selling all sorts of goods, take away food joints, and retail shops specializing in surfing goods were lined up along Corso. The beach was located at the end of Corso. There were surfers and sunbathers everywhere. We ended up having our Valentine's Dinner at Manly Beach - take away fresh fish and chips from Manly Fish Cafe (a fresh fish market and a take away food joint in one). We took the ferry back to the city at dusk - a lovely end to a lovely day.

The next day, we were pretty drained from all the sun so we took it easy and ventured in the nearby town, Chatswood. There, we walked through the shopping district which had two large malls (including Westfield Shopping Center!) and heaps of discounted shops and restaurants. The interesting thing we came across was the fresh meat markets located INSIDE the mall - haha. Interesting.

Next stop, Melbourne!