Company in Sydney

November 21st, 2009

Matt, originally uploaded by zuctronic.

Being in Australia puts you into a time zone that makes talking to friends back home slightly inconvenient. The morning in Sydney is the evening in Chicago and evening in Sydney is the middle of the night in Chicago. I end up chatting with friends through instant messenger during the early hours of the morning. One morning I was chatting with Matt and suggested that he take Thanksgiving week off and come visit me in Sydney. I could show him around the city and he could get some sun.



Matt lived in the suburb next door to where I grew up. We've been friends for almost 15 years now. When Matt booked his trip to Sydney I was a little bit surprised but mostly excited to see my friend again and share what I love about Sydney and Australia with a like-minded countryman.

I got up early to take the train to the airport to meet Matt and help him get his bearings. We got a taxi back into the city and he dropped off his luggage at his hotel. We took the monorail to Darling Harbour for breakfast at Nick's. The air conditioning on the monorail was not working and the city was starting to heat up... the temperature inside the monorail cars was at least 90F/30C.

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We walked around Darling Harbour for a while since Matt was waiting for his room to be ready. After being on airplanes for 24 hours, all a person wants to do is take a nice shower. After stopping back at the hotel we were ready to do some sightseeing. We walked to Circular Quay and past the Opera House. Then through the Botanical Gardens and back into the CBD. We went up into Sydney Tower so we could see the city from above and I could point out where we'd walked and where I've been. After that we went back to the Circular Quay for a quick dinner and then called it a night. The next day we would be going to North Head for some hiking so we wanted to be well rested.

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Sydney Tower

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Dinner at the Quay

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