Augustana – Sydney – 2010!
January 2, 2010
Blog by Erica Aten:
We arrived in Sydney December 31th around dinner time and quickly got ready for the New Year’s Eve festivities here. There were fireworks showing at 9:30 and midnight, some girls went to both showings but the majority of us went to the midnight show. We watched them from Darling Harbor and the show was pretty impressive. We couldn’t see everything because there were some buildings in the way but we did see a lot of them. My personal favorite was the fireworks going off of the end of the bridge that shot straight up like fountains. The streets were incredibly crowded and it was probably a half hour walk to the fireworks. On the walk home sometimes traffic was completely stopped (people traffic), it was incredible how busy the streets were.
On New Year’s Day, a bunch of us got up early and explored the city, we all did a variety of things. Some groups went to the Wildlife Park, some took ferries, and some went shopping and walked around town. The girls who went to the wildlife park and zoo really enjoyed it. The zoo was really big and had lots of animals we have never seen before in the US and the park was very similar except they saw koalas at the park and not at the zoo. My group went shopping and walked to the Sydney Opera House and the outdoor botanical garden. We went to the opera house first which I found breathtakingly beautiful. It really is a work of art and the way it overlooks the harbor was cool to us. The bridge was huge and we could barely see some specks of people walking up it from where we were standing. Looking across the water to the land on the other side was unlike anything I’ve seen before. The houses were all built into a huge hill and there were so many houses it looked amazing. There were also a lot of pretty sailboats in the water that looked like they came from a painting.
After the opera house, my group decided to walk around Sydney and do some shopping. By the harbor there was an outdoor botanical garden with pretty flowers and HUGE trees and birds. The trees had huge branches that were so low to the ground we could sit on them. We all grabbed some pretty flowers and put them in our hair because they were so pretty. We saw Lorikeets and Cockatoos up in the trees and eating on the ground. They let us get close enough to touch them practically so we took a lot of close up pictures. After the garden, we did a LOT of shopping. We purchased some UGG boots since they are made in Australia and they are cheaper than they are at home. We went to a lot of souvenir shops because they had things we could get for family members and friends. My favorite thing we saw was the aboriginal art that was on plates and other terracotta pieces. They were all beautifully hand painted. Most of us bought at least one of the pieces. We were done shopping we walked home because we were exhausted from the night before. We went to a little pizza place for dinner where you can pay by the slice. After dinner most of us just hung around the hotel all night. Some girls went to a bar and saw a band play that they enjoyed a lot. Today we are headed to Manly Beach and we are learning how to surf…It should be an exciting day!
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