Sydney

 

Ah, Sydney.

I had an amazing time. Actually, that's an understatement. I had one of the best, eye opening, inspiring, freeing experiences of my life. I've heard the phrase "The memories will out-live the debt."  And holy shit, they've never been more applicable. It was more expensive than I had planned, and the weather was brutally hot (100*+ and swamp-ass humidity), but I still cried on the day I left.

After my 8 hour layover with Leah and William, I boarded the plane and discovered I had an entire row to stretch out and sleep on. I ate my in-flight dinner, scored like, 7 mini pillows and 3 blankets, took a xanax, and slept like a baby. Around 5:30 AM, the flight attendants woke me up for breakfast, and I saw one of the most jaw-dropping sunrises in my life.

Australia is beautiful. The sky is bigger, the water is blue-green, the streets are clean, and even the graffiti looks like it was professionally commissioned. We went to 2 zoos and an aquarium, where I saw so many kangaroos and koalas (both incredibly lazy) and sharks (big and small). We even saw a platypus! And I came face to face with a huntsman spider, which was thankfully in an exhibit (huzzah--Audrey: 1, Australian Spiders: 0). We lost money gambling. We brown-bagged it through the streets. I painted dude's toes. I forgot to pack enough socks. I was defeated three times by kebabs. I ate kangaroo. I heard "g'day" 5 times. I tromped around town. No one asked me to see my "kno-ife." I learned how to bun my hair. I met amazing people. I ate round, flat bacon. I watched too much British television. I wore shorts every day.  I tried Vegemite (I'm pretty sure it's made of sodomy and bad feelings). I drank expensive scotch. I shared many an awkward inside joke. I had a fabulous time.

And even though I only had a camera phone, I tried to capture it the best I could (and finally, I had an excuse to use my panorama function!) So here's a smattering of the billion pictures I got.

racist coin banks (I'll fore-go showing the really terrible ones)

classy bitches.

brown bagging it through Sydney

 

drinking by the river

me and Odicus

 

Odie's roommate, Joel, caught this with 360* camera abilities. Stupid Fancy iPhones and their amazing picture times.

Drinking by the river was followed by midnight kebabs and watching the stars from behind the Harbor bridge. What a fantastic night.

  

 

Sydney's Sea Life Aquarium is one of six aquariums in the world that have manatees.

I got to pet this giant stick bug under her thorax. It felt like baby skin. It was weird. And awesome. #YOLO

New Years Eve

we watched fireworks from a cricket field. We also saw a dude finger bang a girl he was with. They were standing basically in the middle of the field. More surprisingly, a pair of cops walked past the bangin' couple, and gave a girl peeing beside them a $300 citation. Go figure.

New Years Day mimosas

it was so hot on New Years Day, we filled the tub with cold water and had a sail boat party

mine was the SS Tiger Blood (the only one that didn't sink, mind you)

surprisingly, the only wild spider encounter I had. Thank you Baby Jesus.

main building on the University of Sydney campus

 

Soul Eating Clowns

China Town

graffiti errrrrrrrywere

day drinking and ukulele's

Joel winning big at slaps

Rozelle Markets

New Town tracks

the Star Wars bar that would not open. Despair.

gorgeous water

looking smug on the ferry

on the day we decided to Zoo it up, it was unmercifully hot. All the animals were miserable.

Some of Sydney's awesome architecture

Manly Beach, also incredibly beautiful. I made the mistake of watching Jaws the night before we beached it up, which meant it took Odie an hour to convince me to go shoulder deep in the water. As soon as I did, a wave basically knocked my swimsuit off. Whoo hoo!

I could live here.

baby Hats in the water

corner beach bar

MURRRRICA

Love. We schlepped for what felt like hours in 100* heat looking for a particular bottle shop. Once we reached it, it was Heaven.

My last day. Holy balls, was it hot. Shortly after I captured this, the power went out in the apartment. The walls radiated heat, the poster tac melted off the wall, and I lost 15 lbs just sweating. I'll never complain about NoVA's summers EVER again.

melting poster tac.

In summation: loved it all, would visit again. Even though my flights home were awful (3 hours sleep in 21 hours of flight time), and I slept from 1 AM to 5 PM yesterday and have thusly stayed up all night so far (it's 6:30 AM), and I'm all travel-whacked and wander-lust bitten and generally nuts, I had quite the time.

Moral of the story: take an impulse vacation. Go get your groove back.