Thinking Aloud: Days 1 and 2 (Sydney)
Apr 8th, 2007 by Nick
Back in this post, I outlined the current draft for the vacation. The first four and a half days are well set, because of Qantas’ schedule to Uluru. Qantas only flys Ayers Rock-Melbourne a couple of days a week, so I am flying Sydney-Ayers Rock on Saturday morning and Ayers-Rock-Melbourne on Monday afternoon.
That leaves me about 48 hours, hopefully not jet-lagged (more on that in a few days), to start to explore Sydney. I’m going to come back to Sydney at the end of the trip for 4-5 days as well, so I can take my time. I used this same approach when I went to Europe for the first time, two days in London at the start to meet up with my then-girlfriend, and four days at the end.
Here’s my first pass on what I’d like to accomplish:
- Get some money.
- Find a good walking tour for that first afternoon. I don’t really care about the topic too much, as long as it keeps me moving and talking with other people.
- Do some sort of 2-hour on-off bus tour the second day. The kind where it goes in a circle to 25 destinations and you can get on and off when you reach your destination. The cross between “public transit for dummies” and a jitney service with a talkative driver. Get off four or five times and get myself lost on foot, especially if I splurge for a GPS
unit.
- Maybe do a tour of the Sydney Opera House on Friday morning. But A$150?? I don’t need the free breakfast…
- Establish a good sleep schedule. While I’m a night owl at home, I tend to be an up-at-sunrise guy on vacation.
- Make a purchase with each of my credit cards to figure out which card is giving me the best exchange rate after cash/points-back.
- Check out the Royal Botanic Gardens and walk around The Rocks.
- Get online once each day, as it will probably be prohibitively expensive to do so from Uluru.
This will change at least monthly before I get there, and probably change again twice once I am there. At this point, I’m just mapping out something remotely feasible. I know that the bigger ticket items (Taronga Zoo, Bondi Beach, side trips out of town) will need to wait until my return, and I’ll plan out days centered around each of those items.
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