Everything's bigger in.....Sydney?

It rained (hard!) for 5 straight days.   During those days I did eat some excellent food and toured around some nice museums, but mostly I just read and relaxed.   In 5 days I read 4 books.  Sydney actually reminds me a lot of DC (well DC w/ a great harbor and great beach) and if the weather were like this at home I certainly wouldn't be motivated to be out walking around.

Finally after 5 days of being relaxed, but a little bored, I woke up to day 6 of partial sunshine and even a little blue sky.  Unfortunately I also woke up with a sore throat and runny nose.  Go figure.  Luckily, I forced myself to get out of bed and onto the train to go see this world-famous Bondi Beach that everyone keeps talking about.

The beach really is beautiful and there is a stunning coastal walk along sandstone cliffs and pretty shoreline paths for about 3 miles, but the real star of the show today was the waves.   I knew this was a famous surfing beach so I expected good waves, but I've never seen waves like this.  Apparently the week of storms (which included typhoon-grade winds) had really stirred up the ocean.  The waves were multiple stories high and they would break 5 or 6 times before coming ashore or crashing against the cliffs.  They were were too high for even the crazy Aussies to try to surf.  I literally sat and watched the waves for hours and they rank as one of the coolest things I've ever seen.   I tracked down a local and asked him what the waves normally looked like.   He pointed to a cove that had 15 ft breakers rolling in and said that was normally a completely calm "family beach."

The day I left was finally great weather.  It was a bright, sunny, blue-sky day, which was a perfect day to climb to the top of the Sydney Harbor Bridge (about 440 ft above the harbor).  The climb wasn't necessarily exciting, but it was pretty cool and the view was unbelievable.  I can imagine that the sunrise and sunset tours are pretty great as well.

I also learned an important lesson about hostel fraternizing.  It is not necessarily simple to meet people during the day, but if you catch them around midnight on the way home from the bar you've got a whole bunch of new best friends.  So I did finish up my Sydney stay with a good night out (and a good runny nose)!

Oh and an update on the worst fashion I've seen so far.  I think I'm going to top the construction worker rugby shorts with stirrup pants in chunky high heels. I actually stared, mouth agape.