Back in Kuwait

Wow, great vacation - - who knew Sydney was so HUGE. I was kind of expecting a city the size of Charlotte, NC, but it was more like LA or something. There was a ton of stuff to do, I could have spent the whole two weeks there and not seen it all. I never made it to the beaches or to the other side of the bridge, but I think I had enough of it. The map below kind of captures it, I liked the map because it is always good to know where you are in the world, and any map that has a "You are here" arrow on it is a good map in my book.

In Sydney I did the typical tourist stuff: Bus tour (highly recommended so you can get the layout of the town down), Aquarium (not as good as the one in FT Fisher, NC, nowhere near the quality of the Monterey Museum, I did get a good reference on the fish that I saw while diving, though), Maritime Museum (hmmmm, kind of lacking for a museum that is supposed to track the maritime history of an island nation, but, free). Has anyone else heard of the German guy that kayaked from Germany to Australia? Only took him a short 7 years, including two or three years interned during WW II. Interesting stuff, no way I would do it, his boat was tiny!

I also spent a lot of time just walking around the Darling Harbor area: That is the area that was where the original fleet of convicts landed in 1788. The first house (pictured below) wasn't built until much later and has been preserved.

The Sydney Harbor bridge was impressive, as was the Opera House. I will post some of the pictures to my blog site.

Australians have a weird sense of humor - - - the tower that controls all of the traffic and berths in the harbor is called "the Pill" - - because it controls berths . . . . not a lot of catholics down under.

I have a few more hours to wait til my flight back to Iraq, I think I will take a nap or two . . . .