Wednesday, during which we flew from Cairns to Sydney, was a day with a great high and several small lows. On the high side was an outstanding offer letter for a new position at a very promising small startup–I’ll post more details after I start next week and know the company policy. Have no doubt that this is a great fit for my interests and skills with a strong, experienced team and large market opportunity.
On the low, the hotel in Cairns messed up our airport transfer and rather than fix it on their coin we had to pay $20 extra. That’s in keeping with the overall experience we had at the Novotel Palm Cove Resort, good but nowhere near great. Services were only so-so yet quite pricey and the physical plant left much to desire, like sidewalks that went all the way to the building our apartment was in, about a kilometer from the reception/restaurant center.
Second, word came through that our ten year old 4Runner threw a rod and destroyed the engine. $12,000 for a new engine, $7500 for a rebuilt or likely more than $20k for a new/new to us vehicle. Got to get to that great new job and mass transit isn’t a realistic option.
Third, on arrival at our hotel here, the Old Sydney Holiday Inn, we found out that someone (probably our travel agent) put the wrong codes in the reservation system so that despite our voucher stating we had a standard queen room what the hotel had for us was a room with twin beds and nothing to be done until the next day. After all the other news and a three hour flight I was really frustrated but we had no choice except suffer one night and suffer the hassle of switching rooms.
Thursday was an altogether better day. We took the ferry across the harbor to Taronga Zoo, which has an outstanding collection of animals. Red pandas, African bull elephants, tahr, kangaroos, emus, wallabies, a Komodo Dragon, meerkats, giraffes, deer, many varieties of birds and much more. After a late afternoon time out, we walked a couple of blocks over to a tasty Japanese restaurant called Nakashima. Pure exhaustion had us asleep early.
This morning we had breakfast at a very friendly cafe in the Clock Tower shopping center on Argyle and then strolled over to the Sydney Opera House. We even saw that the French movie made from Harlan Coben’s terrific novel Tell No One was playing at the cinema just the next block over.
Then we took the Essentials Tour. I’m beginning to realize that I really enjoy architecture; when I was here in 2000 I spent a couple of afternoons sitting with a coffee just looking at the Opera House, it’s so beautiful. The tour was neat, we got the story of its 16 year construction (1957-1973) and to see most of the theaters it contains, all but the Opera Theater as the Australian Ballet was rehearsing for tonight’s opening performance of The Nutcracker.
Danish architect Jorn Utzon is responsible for the breathtaking exterior appearance. He won a global competition for his proposed design, now instantly recognizable around the world, but the interior was done by three Australian architects after the Aussie Premier who originally backed the construction lost his 1965 re-election bid and Utzon and the new government fell out. Utzon’s still going strong at age 89, and for the last few years has been designing updates to major portions of the interior, but to this day he’s not been back to see his creation!
For lunch we took a bus to the city center and visited two shopping meccas, The Strand Arcade and Queen Victoria Building. The former is a sizable mall, with four stories of shops and cafes stretching from Market to Pitt streets, but the latter is beyond huge with three ground level and above floors and two basement levels that, aside from the lack of windows, are as filled with Australian and global name brand stores as the others. Heck, they even give guided tours!
Two more full days here to enjoy before our wonderful vacation must end.
BillSaysThis 