And I'm home
I got back this morning from Sydney and NSW. I am so looking forward to sleeping in my own bed for a change. Been gone two weeks, went and looked at the three regional sites we have, then spent a week in the main Sydney office.
I left here on Sunday afternoon and got back Saturday morning two weeks later with one day off. I feel buggered. I was up at 5am this morning to get the flight from Perth to home. I am not budging tomorrow morning.
My one free day in Sydney I did the tourist thing, so did the Bridge Climb. Yes, it is expensive (Costs even more on a weekend), but hey, if you're going to be there, it's worth doing. Very touristy, but not something you're going to repeat anywhere else. If I go there in summer, the night climb I think would be awesome, I wouldn't get up there during the day though, you'd be baked to a crisp.
The day I went up we had a 59km/hr wind (average) with gusts of up to 90km/hr I could lean into the wind and let it support me with no trouble, which was kind of awesome, but its a strong breeze. I did the usual wandering around Sydney for the rest of the Sunday. I wanted to get over to Taronga, but by the time I'd finished the climb, I figured out I would have got about an hour at the zoo and it just wasn't worth it.
It was one of the surprising things about Sydney. Sun goes down at 5pm, by 5:30 it's pitch black. I'd finish work at 4pm. Didn't leave a lot of time to do stuff before it got dark. I did make it out to one of the headlands which was nice, ended up walking around in the dark trying not to freeze.
I had a tiny car to drive around in too. A Nissan Micra. I would not be surprised if it was a 3 cylinder car. An automatic, quite good for zipping around in the traffic, but not smooth on the gear changes and it sounded like a lawn mower. Everyone in Sydney warned me about the traffic, but I actually didn't find it that bad.
Sure, its heavy, but the drivers aren't too aggressive. The most confusing thing for me were the roads, lanes weave back and forth and have all different conditions, so I was constantly stressing about being in the wrong one. I discovered that what I thought was a road identifier T2 and T3 (similiar to M2 (motorway 2) actually meant it was a transit lane for ride sharing with 2 or 3 people. Oops)
I was a little worried about getting back to the airport on time. I wanted to leave work at 2pm for a 4:30 flight. I originally thought it was a 4pm flight, then I discovered I had another 30mins so that was ok. We went out for a farewell lunch. Boss looked up the flight to find it was at 4:30. "You don't need to leave until 2:30 then, will only take you 30mins to get to the airport" We left the restaurant at 2:30, I grabbed my stuff and was in the car by 2:45. Is suppose to take 30mins to get to the airport... plenty of time, until there was an accident and one of the main roads (The Eastern Distributor and Harbour tunnel) were car parks. The 30 min drive took me 50 minutes, then I had to drop off the car, which had a huge backlog of people. I made it to check-in with 5 minutes left. So much for my paranoid 120 minute safety buffer. No lunches next time.
I should post some of Bob's photos, maybe later tonight if I don't fall asleep first.
I left here on Sunday afternoon and got back Saturday morning two weeks later with one day off. I feel buggered. I was up at 5am this morning to get the flight from Perth to home. I am not budging tomorrow morning.
My one free day in Sydney I did the tourist thing, so did the Bridge Climb. Yes, it is expensive (Costs even more on a weekend), but hey, if you're going to be there, it's worth doing. Very touristy, but not something you're going to repeat anywhere else. If I go there in summer, the night climb I think would be awesome, I wouldn't get up there during the day though, you'd be baked to a crisp.
The day I went up we had a 59km/hr wind (average) with gusts of up to 90km/hr I could lean into the wind and let it support me with no trouble, which was kind of awesome, but its a strong breeze. I did the usual wandering around Sydney for the rest of the Sunday. I wanted to get over to Taronga, but by the time I'd finished the climb, I figured out I would have got about an hour at the zoo and it just wasn't worth it.
It was one of the surprising things about Sydney. Sun goes down at 5pm, by 5:30 it's pitch black. I'd finish work at 4pm. Didn't leave a lot of time to do stuff before it got dark. I did make it out to one of the headlands which was nice, ended up walking around in the dark trying not to freeze.
I had a tiny car to drive around in too. A Nissan Micra. I would not be surprised if it was a 3 cylinder car. An automatic, quite good for zipping around in the traffic, but not smooth on the gear changes and it sounded like a lawn mower. Everyone in Sydney warned me about the traffic, but I actually didn't find it that bad.
Sure, its heavy, but the drivers aren't too aggressive. The most confusing thing for me were the roads, lanes weave back and forth and have all different conditions, so I was constantly stressing about being in the wrong one. I discovered that what I thought was a road identifier T2 and T3 (similiar to M2 (motorway 2) actually meant it was a transit lane for ride sharing with 2 or 3 people. Oops)
I was a little worried about getting back to the airport on time. I wanted to leave work at 2pm for a 4:30 flight. I originally thought it was a 4pm flight, then I discovered I had another 30mins so that was ok. We went out for a farewell lunch. Boss looked up the flight to find it was at 4:30. "You don't need to leave until 2:30 then, will only take you 30mins to get to the airport" We left the restaurant at 2:30, I grabbed my stuff and was in the car by 2:45. Is suppose to take 30mins to get to the airport... plenty of time, until there was an accident and one of the main roads (The Eastern Distributor and Harbour tunnel) were car parks. The 30 min drive took me 50 minutes, then I had to drop off the car, which had a huge backlog of people. I made it to check-in with 5 minutes left. So much for my paranoid 120 minute safety buffer. No lunches next time.
I should post some of Bob's photos, maybe later tonight if I don't fall asleep first.