Day 4: Go for the Gold

Now that I knew my way around the rat warren that Sydneysiders call the Central Railway Station, I decided that I would start my fourth day in Sydney at Olympic Village. As we all know, Sydney was host to the 2000 summer Olmpic Games, and I'd heard that the buildings that they had created for the competition were awesome. Thus, I woke up somewhat early (7:00ish) and found my way to Olympic Park.

These were artistically placed poles that randomly had speakers playing radio broadcasts from the Olympics or had little markings on them representing world records. It was a truly Olympian Forest.

Apparently they lit the Olympic Torch inside of this fountain.

I would just like it known that I love and respect the Aussies for what they have done with the buildings. When I was in Barcelona, I was lucky enough to visit the stadium (it was pretty awesome, it was all stonework, and looked like some Neo-Roman Relic) that the Spanish had erected for the Games. The only trick was that it was unusable. They had decided to keep it around mostly to remind themselves that they had, at one point, played host for the Olympic Games. The Aussies, on the other hand, have been kind enough to keep their buildings open to the general public for continued use. For example, the Aquatic Center:
I saw children playing in the slides on the left, I saw aged nobles taking a dip in the hot tubs, I saw young bucks actively swimming and racing. In other words, I saw a center that was not dedicated to the past (as Barcelona's is), instead I saw an Aquatic Center that was living vividly in the present, still playing host to competitions, though maybe not quite as noble as the Olympic Games. It was a sweet, touching sight. And the scent of chlorine will always take me back to my brief stint on the swim team. It was enough to make me regret not bringing my togs with me on the train. Oh well.

Speaking of competitons still going, while I was there, there was actually a high school track meet happening in the Olympic Athletic Center. They were using all of the same equipment that was used during the Olympics, and I think that's a pretty awesome thing to do for a simple High School track meet. It was kinda touching.

Unfortunately, other than the people inside of the Aquatic Center or running at the Athletic Center, Olympic Park was dead. Seriously, here's a picture of the main throughfare in Olympic Park:
So I elected to return to Sydney and play around in Darling Harbor, which was one of my favorite places in Sydney. Yes, it was a litte yuppie, almost certainly out of my modest student budget. That didn't stop me from visiting one really awesome shop, where I bought a particular musical instrument, spent some time with the aboriginal proprietor learning how to play it, talked with the guy for a whiles, and left for my evening tour of the city.

Darling Harbor.

The tour was mostly meh, but it was rather interesting to have somebody explain the history of the buildings that I had been walking by for the past four days. So, in that respect it was quite worthwhile. Oh, and it also took me through King's Cross (effectively the Red Light District):

Stopping by at MacQuarie's Chair. Apparently the old govenor of Sydney, Mr. MacQuarie, decided that he wanted his wife to have a nice chair in which to watch the sunset. He thought, Hell, since they're all convicts anyways, I'll just have 'em cut a chair into the rock in this cliff. Yeah, awesome. And so Mrs. MacQuarie's Chair exists to this day.

From there we stopped by some place, I forget the name, that had an amazing view of the sunset. Truly gorgeous.

Lastly, we went down to one of Sydney's two most famous beaches, Bondi Beach. Honestly, I'm still none too impressed. It has all of the prerequisites of a beach: sand, waves, and people, but it lacked any trait to make it truly impressive. It wasn't very big. The sand was nothing special; it wasn't like walking through silk, it didn't retain the heat of the sun, and it didn't shine my shoes.

But it did have a couple of walls that they enouraged taggers to draw on, resulting in this:

After my last walk on the beach, the tour bus drove away and dropped me back at Darling Harbor. Having nothing more on the plan for the day, I walked into the IMAX theater that they have at Darling Harbor and picked up a ticket for Spiderman 3. I really have to say, the movie was much better the second time around. My initial misgivings still stand, but the extent to which it underwhelmed me was less this time around. And the screen was large enough that I could see the pores on the actor's noses. . . Not necessarily a good thing.

I got out of the theater in a really strange and dangerous mood. I think it's becuase I was so tired before I got into the movie, but, for some strange reason, I elected to walk home. In hindsight I realize that I walked home in the hopes of getting into a fight. I don't usually get into these moods, but when I do it's not a good thing. To my, and other's, benefit, however, I apparently put out some sort of get-the-hell-away-from-me hormone that made everbody drop their eyes when I met their gaze on the street. I really don't know what brought it on, but I'm glad that it left after the night's sleep. Still though, it was yet another good day in Sydney.

Come back for day 5, same Brandt time, same Brandt channel.