Saturday, February 9, 2002

Sydney Harbour and Shopping

We woke up around 8, then went downstairs for breakfast. The hotel is in Woolloomooloo Bay, which is right on the water, just down from the Opera House. We walked up through the Botanical Gardens and down along the water to the Opera House. It's a really crazy building.

Behind it is the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which is a wonderful steel bridge. We're scheduled to climb over the top of it on Monday!

As we were walking along near the water we saw a jet boat zoom up and spin around with people on board. We knew that was the way we wanted to see the harbor! We scheduled a boat ride, and then had about 40 minutes to kill, so we walked over the lead up to the bridge and down some steps to an area called "The Rocks". It a newly renovated area with lots of restaurants and shops.

The jet boat ride was lots of fun. It has twin 350hp engines and can do spins like a jet-ski. We even did some 'surfing' of the wake of a high speed catamaran. Afterwards we had some lunch at the edge of the water, then caught a cab to Oxford Street for shopping.

Unfortunately the items we had seen in the shop windows the night before turned out not to be things that we thought we'd actually ever wear, so we didn't end up buying much. Oh well. We did get a chance to talk to a very helpful (and cute) salesman who told us the place to go for dancing on a Saturday night was 'Arq', a club up the street.

Afterwards we walked back through Oxford Circus and down to the hotel where we took a nap (gotta recharge our batteries for dancing tonight). We got some dinner across the street from the hotel, then watched the opening ceremony for the Winter Olympics. At that point it was about 10:30, so we dressed and caught a cab back to Oxford Street to go to the club.

We arrived about 11:15, and the place was deserted! We decided to give it a while, and around midnight it started to fill up. By 1am it was really going. We had fun dancing and talking to a few of the cute Australian boys. Arq has a lower level with chill out space and a small dance floor, then a main upper level with a larger dance floor and a balcony looking down over it. Sort of a cross between 1015 Folsom and DNA Lounge in San Francisco.

We stayed until about 2:30, then went home to sleep. Definitely a fun night!