Xtina in Oz

Some of you have already heard this story, and I've been trying to keep my blog in chronological order, but I cannot resist. Two days ago I went down to visit a friend on the peninsula south of Melbourne. We went out to a beach with rock pools and such - very scenic.

Well, it turns out you can run out of things to do, even in a big city like Sydney. I mean, there's still the zoo and the aquarium and what not, but those are rather expensive ventures and since I don't plan on having a job for at least another month, money is tight. Also, the weather forecast has been misleading. Both yesterday and today it said it would rain all day. It rained for about 10 minutes yesterday and sprinkled for about 5 today. So plans to go to the beach or to Olympic Park were cancelled, but could have easily been carried on with anyway. Tried to rent a bike from the hostel this afternoon to go burn off some steam, but it turns out they've only got one bike and somebody had already checked it out for the day. Fail. Perhaps will attempt Bondi Beach tomorrow, rain or shine. Am looking forward to skipping town and going to Melbourne on Monday. Of course, I've booked three weeks there, which seems like a lot. I've been in Sydney for a week and am b

Come on, I had to. Monday morning we ventured to the north shore of Sydney to visit Manly Beach. We stopped first at Pancakes on the Rocks, in the historic neighborhood of The Rocks. After some misguided walking (my fault), we finally made it, and the meal was well worth the wait. $5 champagne and orange juice (they didn't know what we meant when we asked for mimosas) started things off with a bang, but the real show stopper was the meal itself - pancakes, a fried egg, grilled tomato and 2 sausage links, all for $13! Delicious, filling, and ... well, pretty cheap for Sydney! We then walked to Circular Quay to catch the ferry across the harbour. Manly is a big surfing beach, so not great for swimming, but a nice breeze meant sunning myself was pretty spectacular. I did get a little bit of a sunburn, as the sun is insanely strong here - strong enough to get through my 30+ sunblock.   the view of Circular Quay (that's the MCA on the left) from the boat   a little cloudy

I don't have a lot to say, but I do have pictures to post. Yesterday we went to the Royal Botanic Gardens. Wiebke wanted to do a guided walk that's offered for free, so we got up early and arrived for the 10:30 blast off time. By 11:30 I think we'd traveled about 100 m from where the walk started. Our guide was very nice, very informative, and very slow. More walking, less talking! So we only covered about 1/4 of the gardens, but plan to go back tomorrow. Some highlights: [hint: you can click on any of these pictures for a bigger version] The Gardens were founded in 1816 - fun factoid! (more of those to come)   tree full of bats, known here as flying foxes Flooded Gum or Rose Gum tree - planted in 1956 Australia is home to 800 kinds of eucalyptus (or gum) trees   a native Australian tree, the Euodia Most bees in the world are stingless beees. What we commonly think of when we hear "bee" is the European honey bee. This is the type of bee that is disea