Rain, rain, go away, and STAY AWAY!

As you probably noticed, it's raining. Has been all day. The plan was to go to the beach and have a nice sunny day, but that obviously didn't work too well. Our backup, the Museum of Contemporary Art, is too far away to walk in the rain, so no luck there either... At least this way I have some time to bring you guys up to speed. But mainly this is going to be pictures:

This is the Central Business District, which is right on the waterside. Lots of Banks, all the expensive hotels like the Four Seasons, and of course the Opera House. It's very nice to just sit there and enjoy the view, but if you get hungry, I'd recommend going somewhere else.





The view from the Harbour Bridge is beautiful, except for a very, very strange building on the side facing the Opera House. People in that building seem to be turning to religion, but so would I if I lived there. Imagine lots and lots of these appartments all stacked on top of and beside each other, and you get a pretty good idea of the overall effect.

But who says you have to leave your house the way you found it? When you walk from Victoria Street (that's where we're staying) down to the water, you pass some kind of community building, which has been decorated by some very talented people.



 As I mentioned before, we all fell completely in love with the Royal Botanic Garden. It's right next to the Opera House and the Ferry Wharf, where we were headed when we got stranded. And of course you can see all the banks from there. By the way, the building with the weird construction on its roof on the left is the Deutsche Bank building.

At first look the Botanic Garden seems like any other park, although I have to admit the plants are a bit more exotic than anything you'd find in a German park. There are palm trees everywhere, and of course the ever-present eucalypts (minus the Koalas, so far, haven't seen any yet).



But then you turn a corner, and there's at least 10 cockatoos. We had been wondering what those huge white shapes in the trees were...







 There is one kind of tree in particular that I've fallen in love with here, and it's not even a native Australian tree (at least I think it isn't). It's the Jacaranda tree, and there's one of them in almost every front yard and in every park.



This picture was taken when we went on a ferry trip to Rose Bay. Sydney ferries are a very non-expensive alternative to a harbour cruise, because a ferry ticket costs as much as a bus ticket, and we happened to have a 7-day-ticket... So we took the ferry to Rose Bay (that was at around 7 pm), and since it was the last one for the day, we just stayed on and went right back. Of course we didn't get to see Rose Bay, but the views of the Harbour were the only thing we were after anyway, so...

I know it's cheesy and very touristy, but every time I see the Opera House I have to take a picture...

So that's Sydney, or at least some of it. Last Sunday we went on a trip to the Blue Mountains, the part of the Great Dividing Range that lies just past Sydney. They don't look very impressive from a distance, they're neither very high nor very steep, but once you enter them they're absolutely beautiful.

Once you get a way into the mountains, there is a little town called Katoomba, and it sits right on the edge of a truly spectacular valley of red cliffs and silvery green forest. Of course, as always happens, the pictures don't do it justice...





Right on the edge of town you can share a viewing platform with busloads of Japanese tourists, but it's absolutely worth getting yelled at in Japanese to get out of the f@$%#ing picture (of course they're very polite, I guess, but then I don't understand Japanese, and I'm sure that's what they would like to say) to see the Three Sisters.

Well, the rest really is just going to be pictures, because I have already taken so much time working on this post (I still have to figure out the finer points of tuning this, hopefully it will get better with time). Oh by the way, it's stopped raining. That's how long this is taking me...

Eucalypt tree

lots of Eucalypt trees

and one more...

the left side of the first Sister...

...and the right side

And even more trees - I really like those trees, if you haven't already noticed...

This is from another place called Wentworth Falls, and there are waterfalls to the left of this, but we didn't get to see them either (it would have been an hours walk to get to the bottom, so we didn't go), so why should you... And I know the cliffs look pretty much the same, but they are different ones, honestly!





Once more with the trees, but again, different trees, different place, and there really are a lot of them, if you hadn't already guessed. But they're really nice, and when you're walking through the forest in the sun it smells really good.

I guess I'll just get this baby on the way, this has already taken far too long. I started this post on Monday and it's Wednesday now...

See ya!