Hey Look! It's Sydney and Pete!

Dudes, I don't know what you have heard about Sydney, Australia, but let me tell you something: It is beautiful. It's true! The people are beautiful, the weather is beautiful, even their trains are beautiful (you can sit upstairs or downstairs, and the seatbacks are adjustable so you can face either way. It's almost too nice). 

Melbournians love to talk about how Sydney is superficial and there's no music or art scene and how Melbourne is SOO much better. That's fine, Melbourne, you're cool, but you can be cool and Sydney can be cool to. Check this out:

In front of the State Library of Victoria in the Melbourne  CBD (Central Business District. It's how they say "downtown"). Whoa!

Cool, right? Also, Melbourne threw this amazing all night art party in the CBD, with crazy projections  on many of the buildings, a massive series of dance lessons in the main square (samba!), and bands playing in the art museum and in front of the main train station until past 5am! The whole city was up all night, I was learning sweet dance moves with a few thousand other folks at 2am, then we went and saw this band:

A horrible photo, but you get the idea.

It was very crowded, I took this at 3am, the stage is Flinders St Station in Melbourne, and there's a person on the traffic light (people thought this was very exciting and cheered loudly).

Cool. Melbourne is definitely cool. But Sydney is also nothing to sneeze at, despite what the Melbournians would have you believe. Truly. Check this out:

Hi Sydney!

That's pretty cool, right? But wait, there's more! Look closely at the bridge and what do you see?

Woooooaaaah!

Wooooooooaaaaah! You can walk on top of the bridge (apparently it's like $300 so I opted not to do this)!

So I guess what I'm saying is that I had a fine time on my trip to Sydney two weeks ago. It was a whirlwind of a trip. I drove up with a band who had four shows in three days over the weekend. We packed into a car at midnight Thursday and arrived in Sydney around noon Friday, then went two hours north of Sydney  to Newcastle where their first two shows were. After the shows we got back in the car and drove three more hours to Wollongong to sleep at Alec's parents house.

This is the only photo I got of Alec or the band before my camera died. Oops.

I sat shotgun with Jake, who had flown up instead of driving all night Thursday and was therefore able to drive at 3am Friday night. As shotgun it was my job to make sure Jake stayed awake, which was difficult, as I hadn't slept the previous night. I asked him riddles and told him jokes. It was very fun, and at one point I fell asleep mid-joke while sitting upright. I didn't stop telling the joke, I just started fading into nonsense, like I was verbalizing my transition into a dream. When I started talking about Raymond Felton Jake realized something was amiss. Anyways, Jake drove safely and I managed to stay mostly conscious and we slept in a lovely home that night. The next day, after a wonderful breakfast at Chez Alec's Parents, I parted ways with the band to meet up with some old friends I had hosted through couchsurfing.org in Portland two years ago. Again, my photo skills escaped me and no pictures exist. Lack of still images aside, Simone and Kara and all their friends showed me a fabulous time in Cronulla and Newtown.

The following day reunited me with my old friend Cammy:

I asked someone to take a picture of us with "that thing" in the background. I should have been more specific, as I did not mean the cruise ship.

She's just moved to Sydney from the Pacific Northwest with her boyfriend, who is starting a grad school program over here. It's surreal to see a friend in a different part of the world. I quite enjoy it and have been experiencing withdrawals since Nate left in November. After I went to the Russian Consulate (a subject for a separate post) Cammy and I walked through the botanical gardens and went on a ferry and took a lot of pictures of the opera house.

That's right, that thing.

So to recap (if you're still here. This is a long one!) Sydney is pretty great, no matter what the folks in Melbourne say.