If this is Thursday, we must be in Sydney

Thursday, 3 Dec 2009    Sydney, Australia

On Wednesday we ascended the Sydney Tower and looked around this amazing, convoluted city.  The view of part of the back side of the famous Opera House wasn't much.  We'll have to take a harbor cruise to do it justice.  Otherwise, though, it was spectacular.

For dinner we walked quite a ways from the hotel looking for "Betty's Soup Kitchen",  described in one of the tourist brochures as being something special.  Turns out it was something former - - not there any more.  Paula says that Tyler should have phoned them first to make sure they were open.  Tyler says that would be like stopping to ask for directions - not in the male toolkit.  Eventually we settled on a pretty good Balkan ethnic restaurant.  True to form, Tyler ordered something unpronounceable just to be adventurous.

While we were out walking last night we encountered a bit of an uphill climb that brought to mind an old riddle from the fifth grade:  how is a lazy dog like a newspaper?

A lazy dog is a slow pup.

A slope up is an inclined plane.

And a newspaper is also an ink-lined plane!  Ta-daaa!

We have noted several instances of locals being impolitely frustrated with us slow, uncertain, clueless American tourists.  We had encountered this before in England a couple of years ago as we fiddled with strange coins and unrecognized bus stops rather than efficiently hopping on and off the bus and getting the heck out of other people's way.  It's not the merchants - - it's the other customers or the people on the street or the train, muttering about us, hurling kurt unkind epithets as they brush by.  And it's not the Asians or the Polynesians or the Indians or the Aborigines - - not the people with darker skins and alien faces.  It's the white folks just like us who have been rude or pushy or impatient with us.  It helps for us to have thick skins and the imperative to forgive.  It is also a cautionary lesson for us to remember back home when we are frustrated by slow, uncertain, clueless people in our way.

Thursday was our day in the park.  We spent hours walking through the Royal Botanical Garden, marveling at all  of the strange plants that we had never seen before.  It was quite a treat for Paula, the botanist, and even Tyler found it worth the visit.

The Garden was home to thousands of Grey Flying-Fox bats, hanging from the upper branches of trees, or flying around.  They have overpopulated the park and lost their welcome by damaging many of the trees, so now there is a movement afoot to try to discourage them from taking up residence.  After all, it is NOT the Royal Bat-anical Garden!

"David Jones" is a large, classy, world-scale department store downtown.  It occupies two connected buildings that take up the better part of two blocks, right next to the Sydney Tower.  The Food Department is the best!  It is reminiscent of Harrod's in London, but even better.  There is a chocolate bar, a cheese and antipasto bar, a meat department, a sushi bar, a bakery, a wine & liquor wing, a deli, a middle eastern section, and on and on.  Most sections have both packaged items for you to buy and take home, and also an eating area and wide selection of ready-to-eats that they will serve up on demand.  Paula is there right now shopping for dinner to bring home and share with Tyler in the hotel room.  We could eat every meal there and not begin to exhaust the possibilities.