New Zealand 2024

Up early for our flight home. I would definitely come back to Sydney and stay again in Elizabeth Bay, if we had more time. But we are running out of that, so probably we won’t revisit many places.  We passed bin chickens on our way to the train station. Pulling our rolling carts with our heavy backpacks is just about all we can do. Thank goodness the elevators work in all the stations. Only one train change, and we were at the Sydney airport.  Our flights were easy. The Delta Comfort+ seats were long enough and reclined enough to be fairly comfortable.  Our seat mate from SYD to LAX was a small woman in the window seat. After she ate some food she’d brought on board, she wrapped an eye mask/scarf thing around her head, covered herself in the complimentary blanket, tucked her feet up on the seat, and slept for most of the flight. At the mid flight snack, she woke up enough to eat that and to ask me if Grant were going to use his blanket. No, she may have it. Another layer,...

Saturday is Rocks Market day. By now, we had learned the 311 bus route to know where to catch it. All good, except our neighborhood street was being blocked off for a street fair. We went to the stop just north of our apartment and read the detour sign and where to go to catch the bus.. After watching the bus we wanted to catch, at our usual stop (!), we walked back there and sat for the next one 20 minutes later. I still don’t understand what the change of route sign meant, In any case, the market at the Rocks was all locally made crafts being sold by the artist that created them. We wandered around, fondling this and that, knowing that our suitcases were already jam packed. I decided on a pair of acrylic neon purple earrings, etched with bird outlines. Perhaps for Steph (Note after the fact: they didn’t appeal to her, so I got to keep them for me. Smile.) I spent a lot of time looking at a booth with hand printed signs. “A Woman’s Place is Anywhere She Wants to Be”, “Vivid” done in b...

Our day revolved around the $1 lunchtime oysters Hayden had mentioned. First up, a trip to opal jewelers to see how much earrings cost. I’d seen a shop downtown but couldn’t remember its name. The one we did find, Australian Opal Cutters and Pearl Divers, had small dangles on stainless steel for $150. I have a benchmark. I suspect one could bargain, especially for the higher priced, absolutely gorgeous pieces. Then off to the QVB, Queen Victoria Building. Built in 1898 and refurbished several times, it was and is the place to shop for upscale clothing, etc. Out front was a wishing well with a statue of Queen Victoria’s little dog Islay. If you throw a coin it, the dog thanks you. Money goes to NextSense, a support service for children. Inside the QVB, at one end hangs the Royal Clock, sadly broken and not playing its trumpets or showing its scenes in the side windows. At the other end, the “world’s largest hanging animated turret” clock, the Great Australian Clock displayed the correct...

As predicted, the rain came and stayed all day today. Not too cold, not too much, but certainly a day to be inside. We lazed around, ate breakfast, then took the bus to the Art Gallery of New South Wales.  Confused about where to get off the bus and how to cross a busy road, we wandered in the drizzle, eventually following another couple who knew the way to the front of the building. Under the huge covered forecourt, school groups were having their morning tea. We started with this art museum to see contemporary aboriginal and Torres Strait islander art. Paintings using the dot technique, designs on bark, masks, all with a modern look at traditional ways. I particularly liked the series of painted pots with lids, especially a bird one. One wooden sculpture portraying 3 aboriginal men in chains being led by military officers referenced a historical event. Very painful to look at, which it should be. Rather than perusing other areas in this museum, we wanted to see traditional aborig...

We dithered about which one to take, however finally late yesterday afternoon decided on a Blue Mountains sunset bus tour. Adding a stop at an animal reserve or Scenic World seemed too much. Plus, we didn’t have to get up at o’dark hundred to get on the bus. It is amazing I can just look on line, then reserve our seats. The weather was supposed to be cooler and perhaps rainy up there, so I wore long sleeves and my hoody, stuffing my raincoat in my backpack. We took cheese, crackers, and cookies for either lunch or dinner depending on how the day went. Off to Central Station via the metro. Public transportation in Sydney is cheap, quick, and easy. Also clean. With the help of Google maps, we know which platform in which station we wanted. It even showed which exit we needed at the station, a great help to come out on the correct side of the street. In DC and New York, we often end up diagonally across from where we want to be. Grabbing a coffee at the cafe next door, we took a seat in t...

The Hop On, Hop Off Bus should probably be called the Lum Lum Bus in our case, for Lumber On, Lumber Off, because we were certainly weren’t looking for any hopping after our trekking yesterday. After a late start, we walked from our apartment to the Ho Ho bus stop just down the street, next to a bake shop that smelled delicious. I was too full from my muesli breakfast to contemplate a croissant or pastry. The pile of merengue ducks was cute. Maybe when we return in the afternoon. The bus arrived, I showed the driver my QR code tickets, and he gave us our headsets. By the time we’d climbed to the upper level, he driven off. A whirlwind tour into the city with commentary we could almost understand.  At the central train station, we hopped of the red line bus and changed to the blue line which would take us out to Bondi Beach.  The surf up and full of surfers, the water cold (I took off my sandals and actually got in up to my ankles), and another beach without a single shell....