Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Much ado about Sydney

Still attempting to finalize things with this trip.

Today, I booked myself a ticket for the Australia National Orchestra's "Adventerous"
concert for Sunday, September 16th. My plan is this--dope myself on the plane once I leave San Francisco and get some sleep there....I land at 6:30am, and I will go to my hotel and drop off my luggage (can't check in that early). I am pretty close, so I am going to walk from there to the Harbour Bridge and do the Pylon viewing station--only $9AUD and has awesome views. For $180AUD you can climb to the top of the bridge, but this is almost the same thing and a million times cheaper.

I will putz for a bit, then walk over to the opera house, have some lunch and go to the orchestra performance. As an 'under 30', I get the best available tickets for only $33AUD. I am sitting in the 7th row almost in the center!! And I turn 30 exactly a month later! After the performance, I want to walk over to a park area with a cut out rock ledge called Mrs. Macquerries's chair. From here, I want to get sunset pictures of the Opera house with the Harbour bridge in the background. I am checking to see if that is a safe plan for a female alone at dusk, but I am fairly certain that is a tourist trap sort of area that will be teeming with dozens of people trying to get the exact same picture I am.

Monday, the 17th Mom and her team will arrive, and if she ever gives me her flight info, the plan is for me to meet them at the airport and we will all go on a city tour for the day to waste some time before we are able to check into our hotel (where we stay for a week).

Tuesday and Wednesday, I am on my own while Mom practices with the team, so I am heading to the nearby Blue Mountains for a little light hiking and sightseeing. I might go to Sydney instead one day, but I am not entirely sure.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday are race days, so I am not sure what other fun things we will do. There is a big closing ceremony on Sunday at the Sydney Olympic park.

Monday, we fly to Cairns and are doing a rainforest tour.

Tuesday, we are going out snorkelling on the Reef. Mom and I are staying aboard a boat for the night for some serious snorkelly goodness and lots of sunset photo ops. I bought an underwater camera housing for my Nikon that I will use for the snokelling pictures. I hope it works!!

Wednesday afternoon we come back to Cairns, and have a nice dinner/evening at our hotel

Thursday, we fly back to Sydney and explore there

Friday afternoon, we fly back to the States.

Woo and hoo.

Mom, this is your public calling-out for not yet giving me your flight info. Oh, and the Visa info (if they got mine, when it will be mailed to me). And stuff. But we are going to have lots of fun! I am bringing my laptop to blog along the way (much cheaper than internet cafes and we have free internet in our hotel room)

4 comments:

Bump Fairy said...

That is going to be SO fun!!

Anonymous said...

Alyca...
IT WORKED!!

Yes, to answer your questions about my flight....
I arrive in Sydney at 6:20 am. on the 17 th.
I leave on the 28 th at 1: 55 pm.
love,
Mom

Davinie Fiero said...

Take many photos for me to scrap for you! SEriously! I need more diversity! I would be FREAKED out to put my camera in ANY underwater contraption, but good luck with that!

alyca said...

Are you kidding me?? I am taking two cameras (the cheapie $150 one goes in the underwater housing...not risking the canon in that!), a 1gb memory card for each PLUS a 2gb extra card for the Canon, PLUS my laptop and connections so I can download pictures and keep space on my camera cards for even MORE pictures.

Expect a 2 hour long presentation this christmas on my entire trip with a minute by minute, blow by blow description of each and every photo. I am doing this trip with a goal of amazing pictures of a far away land.