So, we meet again. After a semester back in the States, I decided I couldn’t wait any longer before traveling some more. When my friends Reilly and Skandy (Jack Skandalis) told me they were planning a trip to the land down under, I decided to join in. So, the three of us decided to take a month long trip to Australia – Sydney, Cairns, Brisbane, and then we’ll be taking a camper van up the coast of both the South and North islands of New Zealand(all of which I plan to chronicle on the blog). We left home for Australia on December 20th, and we will return home January 28th. As today is December 26th here in Australia, it is still the 25th back in The States. So, merry Christmas to everyone back home! We have been in Sydney, Australia for a few days now (five to be exact) and it has been an incredible time so far.
Our trip started all together in College Park the night of the 19th. Skandy decided it would be a good idea to stay up all night, the night before our 8am flight to try and align our sleep schedule with that of Sydney’s. Reilly and I decided to join in as well. One of our other close friends, Colby, decided to come hang with us as well since this would be our last night all together. We all had flights out from DCA in the morning on the 20th, but Reilly and Skandy were flying to Seattle at 8am, and I had a flight to L.A. at 8:30am. Because I had joined in on the trip late, I had a different flight. However, we were all going to meet up in Hawaii to take the flight to Sydney together. The flight to LAX was a grueling 6 hours. I tried my best to sleep, thinking the lack of sleep from the night prior would help, but I still struggled to sleep for more than a few hours at a time. After landing in LAX, I waited for around an hour before boarding my flight to Hawaii. Skandy and Reilly spent a few hours on a layover in Seattle. They met up with my buddy Matteus (who you may remember from our Barcelona trip). I landed in Honolulu around 4:45 and I had a layover 16 hour layover until our flight to Sydney. After arriving, I decided to get out and do some exploring. I wanted to try and see the beach before Leaving so I hopped on a bus and headed to Waikiki beach. The sun was beginning to go down when we arrived to Waikiki but I was so hungry from the past 20 hours of flying that I needed to eat something. I hadn’t had a meal since late night McDonalds back in College Park. I looked at the restaurant options along the strip near Waikiki beach access and found a place with 4.8 stars on Google. It was a Grilled Cheese place that looked real yummy. After the 30 minute bus ride, I arrived at ALOHA MELT. I got a tasty Bacon Patty Melt. It was amazing, especially after having not eaten for so long.
I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the beach before sunset. But, after grabbing the bite to eat, it was already dark out. But, I decided to explore the area anyways considering I still had 13 hours before my flight. It was a very wealthy area with fancy cars driving by and loads of tourists wearing expensive brands. As I headed towards the beach, I came upon a market with all kinds of Hawaiian trinkets and things. I wanted to get one of the cool tikis you see in the pics but I knew I didn’t have the room in my bag to bring one home. As I continued, I was surprised to find a Kith store – one of my favorite streetwear clothing brands. The store had two Kith surf boards on the walls and some really cool, expensive Bear Bricks (the bear toys). As I continued towards the beach, I found a narrow walkway that was lined with huge surf and paddle boards. They were all locked up, but seemed to have been used recently (likely that morning).
After walking through to the end of this walkway, I found a giant resort right on the water. It was connected to a mall that the Kith store was attached to, along with several other restaurants and stores. There were lots of BMWs and Mercedes in this area. There was also a very nice, Hawaiian Christmas set-up with illuminated Pine Trees and all. I stayed here for a bit to take in the spirit of Bing Crosby’s Christmas classic, Mele Kalikimaka. Just beyond the Christmas spectacle was the resort’s beach access with a giant pool and hot tub. There were a few people in the hot tub, and I probably could have joined them, but I knew I would regret it at 8 in the morning on my flight to Sydney. So I decided to grab some refreshments to fuel up, and get ready for the bus ride back to the airport.
I arrived back at to the airport at around 9:30pm. As I tried to get back through security, I learned that I would not be allowed back into the airport until 5:30am the following morning. Apparently because the ticketing office for JetStar (the airline I was flying with to Sydney) was closed for the night, I couldn’t get my ticket or be allowed passage through international security. Brutal. So, I thought to myself “Well. I was going to sleep on the floor somewhere inside anyways. I’ll just look for somewhere to sleep for a while around here.” The closest thing I could find to a comfortable, carpeted place to sleep was atop the baggage claim conveyer belt. Everything else was either a chair or wooden :/
However, after roughly 15 minutes of lying down, an airport police officer informed me that this was “not a place to sleep.” So, in a numbed, half-asleep state, I continued roaming around the airport, looking for somewhere somewhat comfortable where I could lay down. But frankly, after around 10 minutes, I gave up. I decided I might have a chance of getting through security if I could reason with the guy scanning our tickets at the security checkpoint.
When I got up to the guy at security, I explained my situation to him. He then told me that he believed I may already be in the system because it was 12 hours prior to my flight. So, he tried checking my ID and sure enough, I was in! I was a bit upset the other airport staff had lied and said I wouldn’t be able to get through. But, I was really just happy to finally be able to sleep. I found some random gate with carpeting, set up my pillow (a cotton t-shirt wrapped around my raincoat), and tried to fall asleep before Skandy and Reilly were to arrive at 12 that night. But, before I could, they arrived. Skandy was a bit sick from the lack of sleep and hectic travel, and Reilly was starving. So, while Skandy and I tried to fall asleep, Reilly decided to take the half an hour walk to the nearest Wendys to try and get a substantial meal considering everything in the airport was closed. While Reilly was gone, and just as Skandy and I were about to fall asleep, the airport staff came up to the two of us and told us we needed to move so they could clean the gate. We were pretty defeated at this point. Roughly 48 hours without proper sleep. As we roamed around, we reconvened with Reilly and all bounced around between trying to fall asleep on massage chairs, chairs in the lobby, and looking for other gates we could actually lay down and sleep at. Finally we found a gate with carpeting that seemed to be a safe bet. Here, we were able to sleep for a few hours before heading to our gate for the flight. After our nap, we went to our gate and waited (and half slept) for another hour or so before Jetstar staff came to give us our tickets.
The Jetstar employee we spoke to informed us that all of our bags would need to be checked because they didn’t meet the requirements of a carry on item. But, I managed to squeeze my backpack in on my second try after taking out all of my chargers, toiletries, and my laptop. Hehehe!
The flight to Australia was the longest of the three we had taken. But, the Jetstar employee who gave us our tickets was kind enough to seat all of us together. The flight would be approximately 10 hours and 40 minutes. I started off the flight by watching Leave the World Behind on Netflix. It was good and nice to have something engaging to keep my mind occupied on the flight. After the movie, I tried sleeping for a few hours. But before long, I accepted the inevitability of watching another movie. Luckily, at this point there was only another 2 hours and 30 minutes left, roughly the runtime of Unbroken – the second movie I had downloaded on Netflix. So, I watched this until we landed. Both movies were good choices for the flight. But man was I happy to be in Sydney. After exiting the plane, we had to go through customs and baggage claim (for Reilly and Skandy’s bags), and then we all hopped on the train and headed to our Hostel. Skandy was still feeling pretty under the weather so he went right to bed. Reilly and I were both starving at this point so we decided to try a local Chinese place. Our hostel is right next to Chinatown in Sydney, so there are plenty of good Asian options. The place we went was really yummy. We got 16 dumplings to share, I got a beef noodle dish, and Reilly got pork buns! But after eating, the lack of sleep started to hit. So we headed to the hostel for some much needed shut eye.
The next day, Skandy and I grabbed some breakfast at a local pancake place called “Pancakes on the Rocks.” It was very tasty. A nice taste of home.
After we ate, Skandy decided to spend a bit more time resting. While Skandy was home at the Hostel, Reilly and I took advantage of the beautiful weather and took a walk through Sydney’s Botanical Gardens. It was amazing. One of the coolest parks I’d ever seen. Each of the flower patches was marked with a fragrance level(out of three stars), which we were sure to try out. The walk also led right up to the Sydney Opera House. This has so be one of, if not the, coolest buildings I’ve ever seen. We took a tour of it later in the week that I’ll get to later but just the geometry of the building is so cool to see in person. Reilly and I continued around the Harbor and noticed a super cool yacht party going on in the middle of the Harbor that we were both very jealous of. We stopped at a little beer shack for a drink and some XL Jenga. We got “Goat” beer. Not half bad. During our little day trip, we came across several of Australia’s most hated bird, the bin chicken. They were Funny little guys.
There is much more to our trip in Sydney. I am going to begin working on the next post soon, but I wanted to break it up because we have done so much! So, here’s this for now. Enjoy!
Nick Henderson
6:47pm
Wake Up! Sydney Hostel, Sydney, Australia