St. Paddy's Day the Australian Way!!!

Another week has passed with another week of school squeezed into a few long days of work followed by an extra long weekend! This weekend I found myself in Sydney. After 3 days of lectures, studying, and hearing all the fun my family was having in Phillip Island, wine country, and the Great Ocean Road, I decided enough was enough and went to join them on their holiday (This post is mostly pictures and very few words because my shortened week included handing in my first college essay this week, and am all written out). On Wednesday I took the train back into town and made it to their hotel in time to steal a glass of their wine from their trip to a vineyard Tuesday before they got back from the Great Ocean Road. Once they got home they immediately started showing me pictures from their travels. As we were looking through, we got to pictures of a cockpit. I was extremely confused and asked what it was. Kelli replied, "We went in a helicopter!" That's right, while I was slaving away at school, my family (including my mom who is deathly afraid of heights) had taken a helicopter ride over the 12 Apostles, the iconic image from Victoria! I guess the saying when the cat's away the mice will play is true...
Anyway, they were pretty tired from their long day, so we stayed in and had bread and wine. Thursday we had one last relaxing morning in the apartment before heading off to the airport. We made one quick pit stop at Pie Face to get some famous Australian meat pies before taking the bus to the airport. We got to Sydney around 2. After checking into our hotel we set out to explore the city. Our hotel was about an half hour walk from the water, and the whole time the four of us were holding our breadth waiting to see the iconic view of the Opera House and bridge. After walking through the Royal Botanic Gardens, we finally saw it! We took out our cameras and started taking our first of literally millions of pictures of the Opera House. We continued walking toward the harbour and decided to have dinner at a bar right under the Opera House. Not too many dinners come with that kind of view!


Dinner at Opera Bar

 Friday was an extremely busy day. We hopped on a bus tour to get ourselves better acquainted with the city. After the first part of the tour we decided to walk across the Harbour Bridge. On top of the Bridge were the best views of Sydney Harbour. We didn't do the $200 Bridge climb, but we did go up an observation tower that gave almost the same, but less frightening views.

View From the Harbour Bridge

After our bridge "climb" we found a nice Irish Pub (yes, us Geisler's can find an Irish Pub anywhere) and had smoked salmon and Guinness. We then got back on the tour bus to head out to Bondi Beach. Bondi lived up to its hype of being one of Australia's best beaches. The sand was amazingly smooth, and so were the views. We weren't able to go swimming because we had less than a hour to get back on the bus, but we were able to take a nice walk on the beach before heading back to the city.

Bondi Beach

We got back into the city just in time for dinner. It was my turn to choose where we ate, so I decided to get fish and chips take away and eat it over looking the harbour. I didn't think we could beat the view from dinner the night before, but I was wrong. This one took the cake. I'll let you decide for yourselves.

Fish and Chips on the Harbour

We finished the jam-packed day by taking one more walk on the bridge to see the harbour at night. We were all very tired from all the walking, but the views were well worth it!

Opera House From the Bridge

Saturday we were pretty tired from the busy day before, but we walked back down to the harbour and booked a tour of the Opera House. Having secured our tour, we went to the Irish part of town (it was St. Paddy's Day after all!) for breakfast. Instead of a traditional Irish breakfast, we went to a pancake house. Now I make a pretty mean chocolate chip pancake, but these were to die for! Not only did they come with chocolate, but ice cream, bananas, and walnuts as well! This may be the new pancakes I make for football Saturday's now.


The best pancakes ever (and yes there are indeed pancakes under there)

 It may not have been the most Irish way to start St. Paddy's Day, so to make up for it, we went back to the Irish Pub to share a Guinness. In true Irish style, the party had already started. We had our tour to get to though, so off we went. The tour was one of the best I've ever been on! We got to see many of the performance spaces inside the building, and got some great behind the scenes stories (including one about an unfortunate mailman who got lost while delivering a package and ended up busting into a Shakespeare performance. He was so terrified of getting lost again that he hid backstage for 2 hours until the play was over). Luckily, we didn't get lost and made it out with no incidents. Although it was rainy all day Saturday, we still wanted to see the harbour from the water. I had been told that you could get just as good views on a ferry as you could a harbour tour that cost 4 times as much, so we decided to take a ferry to Manly Beach, the other famous Sydney beach. Despite the weather the views were very good. We traveled through the harbour and saw tons of sail boats out enjoying the windy day. My mom was in heaven! The 3 of us were trying to hide from the rain with our jackets, but she sat outside with a huge smile on her face the whole time. Manly itself was a very nice town, but since it was raining, no one was on the beach. We walked around a while, but got back on the ferry pretty fast. We got back to Sydney just in time to make it to St. Mary's Cathedral for Mass.
After Mass we headed to the Irish Pubs for dinner, but it was insanely crowded. Since we had already had our Guinness for the day, we opted for an Italian dinner instead. Oh, I almost forgot. The Opera House was lit up in green to mark St. Patrick's Day!!! I would upload a picture, but my camera ran out of batteries Saturday afternoon.
Sunday morning Kelli and I had to get up early to go to the airport. I thought I would go get breakfast with her and then go to my gate, but it turns out the international and domestic airports are a $15 cab ride apart, so we said a quick goodbye in the cab, and she was gone. It was weird to walk away from the cab knowing it would be 5 months until I see her again. I was just glad we got to spend a week together here.
Before I wrap up this post, I just want to give you an idea of how long the flight is to get back home. Since Kelli got on the plane this morning, this is what I have done/will do before she's back in Milwaukee:
-Spent 2 hours in the airport waiting for my flight
-Flew from Sydney to Melbourne
-Took a bus, train, and bus to get to campus
-Wrote a lab report
-Had dinner
-Loaded my pictures on Facebook
-Planned my Fall 2012 class schedule (my last one ever!!!)
-Had supper (late night snack)
-Wrote my blog
-Have a full night's sleep
-Get up and get ready for the day
-Attend 2 lectures
After all this, I'll finally call her, and if everything is on time, she should just be getting back to Milwaukee. I'm not looking forward to having to do that flight again...