The course was around the grounds of Centennial Park which made it a cross country track of sorts, something I've never done before - a combination of different surfaces such as dirt, grass, sand, stones, pine needles etc. I took the start pretty easy and didn't try to overtake until I felt people were starting to hold me up, so I was down in about 10th place early, and had moved up into a share of 5th to 7th by the end of the first kilometre. In the second kilometre I caught up to 4th as well, he tried to speed up to stay ahead which is a stupid thing to do so early, but I got by him soon afterwards anyway. The first two guys I could tell I wasn't ever going to catch, but the third place kid looked like he might be a chance, even though he had a good twenty second lead already.
I spent the next few kilometres slowly closing the gap and I was sitting right behind him after about 4.5 kilometres. I was thinking of sitting behind him for a while but he was almost out of gas so I just went past and that was it. Because the half marathon runners took off ten minutes earlier there was always people to overtake on the run on the finish, and it made it almost impossible to get lost on the way there. Right at the finish line some other kid started to sprint to stay ahead of me, which was really confusing because I was really sure I was in third. It took a while to figure out he must have been in the 4km race instead.
The organisers stupidly put the drinks station for finishers right next to the running course, so there was an ongoing situation where exhausted people just finishing their race were walking over to get a drink and stopping right in the path of the half marathon runners coming back around on their second or third lap. There were so many near misses with lots of small kids around, a really bad job by the organisers. There was a bit of a wait before the awards were handed out - the only thing worse than having to wait around for a third place trophy is not being quite sure if you even finished third at all. Not to worry in the end, because they just had an under fifty category and handed out trophies (medals are so much more practical) for the top seven! - maybe they asked for several trophies at the shop. My final position was third place with a time of 27 minutes 7 seconds for 7 kilometres - not great, but could have been worse.
After getting ready for the rest of the day I walked up to Circular Quay and boarded a ferry over to Manly, which took about thirty minutes. I was surprised that the South Sydney coast extends around so far, I figured there'd be nothing but ocean off my side of the boat after the first five minutes, but the coastline just kept going. Getting off at Manly wharf the corso begins - no idea what a corso is, is it just another word for mall? There was shops in every direction along the way, but I headed straight for the beach. The beach front at Manly is quite a lot bigger than Bondi, although it appears to be all one beach by the time I had walked north as far as I could go I was apparently at Queenscliff Beach instead.
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| Manly course. Does that even make sense? |
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| Manly beach. |
I went back the other way on the sand, which was a bit of relief for my sore, sore feet but a decent calf workout at the same time, I didn't go quite as far as Shelly Beach which was just around the corner. Back at the corso then I stopped in for some froyo again, the shop had some more exciting flavours, so I picked a combo of Bananas Foster! New York Cheesecake! and Toasted Coconut! I even had to skip some others.
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| Manly beach (R). |
After getting the ferry back to Circular Quay I jumped on another train back to Central, then walked across to Darling Harbour via Chinatown - the other option would have been Sydney's one and only tram route (I also forgot to mention, they closed down the damn monorail for good some time last year, what a disaster).
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| I'm on a boat. |
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| Food Court Eating World! |
Darling Harbour is the home of the world's biggest IMAX, where they had two great, original options to choose from:
- Captain America 2
- Spider-Man 2
...not really worth stopping for. So I took a shortcut across Pyrmont Bridge which runs between the Harbourside Shopping Centre and the Australian National Maritime Museum. I had a look at what the museum had to offer since there appeared to be some naval boats outside, but it looked like it was just a few exhibits and a special feature on whales! - and it wasn't even free!!
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| Pyrmont Bridge. |
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| I think that's Sega World on the left. |
At the Harbourside Shopping Centre they have Australia's first and only Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville restaurant. I love margaritas but it was a bit early in the day for one (or more), the shopping centre was otherwise ordinary. Finishing my loop of Darling Harbour I passed the Chinese Garden Of Friendship which reminded me of Mortal Kombat for some reason. Six dollars to walk around a small garden - why not just go to the Botanical Gardens?
The rest of Market City was open again, I didn't plan to stop but they were claiming to have the only outlet shopping in the city, which grabbed my attention just slightly. They didn't have most of the big names (in sports) but I found a couple of t-shirts in the Converse shop so it wasn't a waste of time. I also went up to the restaurant level and found a great Japanese restaurant with my favourite asian meal on the menu - tofu don! It was actually teriyaki tofu don in this case, where the "don" basically means "curry rice". I wish I could have eaten there, but I already had other plans, which was quite a shame.
My final excursion of the day was back to the Botanical Gardens before closing time. I actually haven't really walked around the Melbourne Botanical Gardens in their entirety, so I can't compare the two, but there was a bit of variety and a lot of open space with this one. They didn't seem to have swans like Melbourne's gardens, instead they had lots of those white ibis wandering around.
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| The Big Cactus. |
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| Tony Abbott's house. |
For dinner I took the train out of the city to Newtown. Newtown was surprisingly busy and they have one long street - King Street - packed full of shops and great restaurant choices, probably something like Chapel Street I suppose. My destination was Australia's one and only Burgerfuel store! I ordered the same as in Auckland and it was as good as I remembered, a good way to finish the trip.
On Tuesday morning I sadly had to make my way back to Melbourne already. Unsurprisingly the flight was again delayed by half an hour - the explanation, high winds in Melbourne meant they were down to one runway, just as I predicted!
Sydney: 8/10
- Days: 3.5
- Cities: 1
- Flights: 2
- Taxis: 0
- Expenses: $325 approx (plus flights and hotels)
- Photos: 150 approx
- Report: 5000 words approx
Good
- Asian bakeries
- Beaches
- Better inner city suburbs
- Double decker trains
- Weather
- Yoghurt shops
Bad
- AFL on television was limited
- CBD trains don't quite go where you need them
- Too much car traffic in the cbd
- White taxis too similar to police cars
Missed out
- Bicentennial Park
- Centennial Park
- Darling Harbour's Saturday Fireworks
- Gameworks at Powerhouse Museum
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