The day started quite early in the morning for me, I could not sleep in anticipation of the much awaited game between England vs. Sweden, so I started to flip through the TV channels and to my delight they were showing Sri Lanka vs. England cricket match. Forget football, I got live cricket. What a day for Sri Lanka, they hammered England to a mammoth total of 320 and then took care of business when they bowled. So maybe the football game was going to be as good and England would not finish on top of their group and would have to face Germany, but looks like lady luck has been with England this world cup, they drew with Sweden and have again have avoided to a play a team which would show how lucky they are to be in the round of 16. Owen was a loss for England, but he was shadow of himself this world cup anyway. OK, enough about sports, I had a packed day in front of me and there was a lot to cover.
Hoping to get the same kind of weather as the day before, I checked out around 8:30 am from the hotel, in the lobby I looked at the weather on the TV for the day that said showers for most of the day, but when I looked outside it was just a bit overcast and I said to myself could it be that the weather men in Sydney like in Pakistan? Where when they tell you it will rain, the sun shines and when they say it will be dry we get a lighting storm :-). Either way it was not going to stop me of proceeding with my day. Grabbed my $5 muffin ($AUS) from the harbor and my ticket for Sydney Explorer tour. There were another tour toward Bondi beach, but with the weather predicted I opted to stay with the sights in the city, plus I had already been to Manly Beach last night and that was amazing, so my checklist to cover a beach in Sydney was already done :-) Sydney Explorer was like any other hop and off buses, where you get off on any place you and get back on when you feel. Well first stop was Sydney Opera house, because I was staying at Harbor I had already walked from my hotel to the Sydney Opera House steps and back so I opted to stay back on the bus, but when the stop for the Royal Botanic Gardens came I opted to hop off the bus, just I was getting off I asked the driver when the next bus would come and he told me every 20 min and he said good luck I hope it does not rain and I just smiled at him. Well walking through the gardens was very nice till I came to a point for this breath taking view of the Opera House and Harbor Bridge, I did not waste time to get a shot taken. As I was enjoying the view I felt a few drops come down, being bald has it’s advantages and disadvantages (perfect target for bird poop :-) within a few seconds it started to come down hard and like they say in Ireland “it was lashing” , I could not an area in the garden where I can save myself from getting wet. At that point I put my hood on my head and stood under a tree and took a picture of myself to weather the storm. This must have been the longest 20 min I waited for the tour bus to come.
To my delight I saw the Explorer head my way and I hopped on and guess what the rest of the day stayed on and did the 2 hrs tour. The tour was pretty good and covered most of the places I would not have been able to cover on foot. The tour took me through to various places (Aquarium, ChinaTown, Darling Harbor and Harbor Bridge etc). As I got off to my last stop at the Sydney Cove, I realized it was almost time to head for my Sydney Cricket Ground tour. So I took a taxi from there to SCG. I got there just in time for the tour to start and it turned out there was another crazy guy like me there for the tour, all the way from Singapore. The next two hours were spent going to Aussie Stadium (spent 20 min) and rest of it at SCG. The ground sure does have a lot of history to offer and we were lucky enough to get a good guide (Raj) who took us through places where generally the big tour groups were not taken, I mean he took us through the dressing room and told us some stories on how Hayden broke the door of their pavilion while coming back from getting out to a bad decision to how Langer broke his bat in the dressing room. It was great to be there. I have made it to two of the five cricket grounds I wanted to visit on my trip (Hong Kong, Singapore and Johannesburg left). Having finished the tour I realized I still had some time to kill so I took a taxi from SCG back to Darling Harbor area where took a ride on the Air Train which took me around the area and I had lunch at the official American Embassy (McDonalds). Time flew walking through the Harbor area once I had lunch and I realized it was time to head back to the airport to catch my flight back to Auckland, so made my way back by hopping back on the Explorer Bus to my hotel to pick my bag pack and make my way to the airport. Two days was not enough in Sydney and I want to come back again, there is a lot more this city has to offer and I hope to be back here sometime in month of Dec (who knot’s which year :-).
The flight back to Auckland was pretty smooth and I finally caught a nap on the plane but in between also managed to watch Failure to Launch. All in all, this is the best I could do in two days, but I leave a satisfied man.
No comments:
Post a Comment