A Trip to Australia and New Zealand
Return to Sydney
Our first day in Sydney, following breakfast aboard ship, started out with the disembarkation process at the dock. After we said goodbye to all of the wonderful crew that had taken care of us so well for the previous two weeks, we walked the plank into the terminal building, showed our passports, handed in our customs/immigration cards, and got into a taxi for the embarrassingly short ride to our hotel on George Street. (Had I known where it was, we could have walked to it easily.) We stayed in a very small and very old hotel in the heart of the neighborhood surrounding the quay - The Russell. It styled itself as a bed and breakfast. Our room was in the tower on the third floor (walkup) and we shared a very clean bath with the room next door. The staff was extremely accommodating and got us into our room within a few minutes of our arrival, even though we had appeared at their door hours before the usual check-in time. We dropped our bags in the room and spent the rest of the day exploring the area around the hotel which is known locally as "The Rocks."
The Rocks is the site of the original European settlement in Australia, dating from the eighteenth century and is full of reminders of days long gone. It is also full of pubs, restaurants, boutique shops, galleries, and all of the other stuff tourists delight in. Ironically we found the sheepskin coat that we had been searching for throughout New Zealand in a shop which was practically next door to our hotel. Made in New Zealand it was very expensive, but also very beautiful. After buying it, we celebrated by making the acquaintance of two of James Squire's excellent brews in the ancient Hero of Wellington Public House. A bit more wandering to get the lay of the land around our new digs and then we turned our attention to some obvious logistic matters. Sydney is a very expensive town. It is also very large and things to do are spread out over considerable distances. Even for inveterate walkers like ourselves it was obviously going to require the use of a variety of local transportation to get around. We purchased two green passes which permitted us to utilize any of the city busses, trains, or ferries for the duration of our stay. We tried our new passes out on a delightful ferry trip to Watson Bay where we walked the trail along the bluff overlooking the entry into Sydney Harbor. That evening we wandered around the Circular Quay admiring the night views and dining in an outdoor cafe not far from our hotel that served excellent Italian food.
