Bondi Beach and Darling Harbour

And I thought yesterday's 7 hours of walking was bad.

The nine of us (one guy, eight girls) who decided not to go surfing decided to head over to Bondi Beach on this gorgeously sunny day! We met at 10 in the lobby, boarded a bus, a train, and another bus and found ourselves facing the Pacific Ocean 90 minutes later. The group seemed to be divided between sitting on the beach and getting a tan, and going on a few infamous walks along the coast. I joined the group doing the latter, and despite our best intentions, we never did see that other group again.

The walk was from Bondi to Bronte. I wanted to go all the way to Coogee (Say each letter: cooooo-geeeeee, not cog eee), but we decided to stop after the two hour walk instead of continuing onto the five hour walk. The walk was spectacular! The views were gorgeous, the company was grand, and the weather was beautiful. I don't think we could have asked for a better day to do this walk. Be sure to check Picasa for photos!

After our walk, we boarded a bus back to Bondi Junction (a gigantic shopping mall/train station) to grab some lunch. I managed to find the only Mexican food in Australia (you could hardly call it Mexican, though), while the rest of the clan grabbed McDonalds. After lunch, we decided to board another bus back to Bondi Beach to try to meet up with the group.

Amber (a member of a CAPA group consisting of two people whom we've adopted our group) decided she wanted to buy a surf board so that she could go surfing at Bondi (she's down here until August, so she'll spend a lot more time out here than we will). The first shop she stopped in happened to have a surf board that was in rough shape (it wasn't pretty, but would do the job) for US$68!!! New surf boards were going for (reasonably priced, that is) US$600 so she got a really great deal on it, especially given the fact that she's planning to throw it away/donate it when she leaves.

After walking around Bondi for another hour or so (total walking time thus far: 5 hours), we decided to head over to Darling Harbor to check out the free Jazz and Blues festival this weekend since Darling Harbor turned 21!! Yazi and I were both very wiped out at this point since we had been walking all day yesterday, and our walk around Bondi to Bronte was no easy walk this morning. I felt like a zombie. The harbor was beautiful, though, and we took some good pictures. The Jazz and Blues festival was pretty good, there's more going on tomorrow so we plan to actually watch some shows then.

After Darling Harbor (total walking time so far: 8 hours), a few wanted to go see the Opera House all lit up, and check out this Vivid Sydney Light Tour that's going on right now. The light tour celebrates Sydney's past, present, and future. Some of the light spectacles are incredibly lame and not worth the effort to walk, while others are breathtaking! We plan to do the full thing tomorrow (I think that's another 1-2 hour walk, and we were all falling off the train at this point). Anyway, so we boarded another train to head back over to Circular Quay to see the Opera House.

I never knew this, but apparently there are light shows on the Opera House as night. Tonight's show must have been "specimen" because some of the lights looked like cells under a microscope. It was…interesting…and sort of ugly. Sorry, Opera House. We'll try again tomorrow.

Total walking time today (and more intense walking than yesterday): 10 hours!!