City Slickers

The kids and I went on a side quest to Sydney for two weeks. It was a planned meetup with Will’s friend who flew over from Utah. The trip started with a cancelled flight and spontaneous 2.5 hour Uber ride to another airport followed by an unplanned red-eye. The Uber ride saved us. It was a straight up John-Candy-and-the polka-band moment from Home Alone. Nothing fazes me now.

We are not big city people, as has been well established on this blog ;) but I know how to do big cities with the kids!!! We stayed in the coolest neighborhood, Surry Hills: huge leafy trees, cool stores and cafes, great playgrounds, and the best bakery a block from our place. Will picked out our hood. We were in an apartment on the third floor with a big patio, loads of windows and fantastic weather. I joined a gym. Will found a local outdoor 50m pool to swim laps every other day. Required training for the summer camp leadership training program!! It was a 15 minute walk to the pool. Joining Will on these walk-swim-walks was a highlight of my stay. The other big highlight was so much one-on-one play time with Hazel.

I remain obsessed with the walkable-life. Need milk? Walk and buy it. Going to the gym? Walk and workout. Pool? Walk and swim. Time to hit a playground? Walk and play. Going to the movie theatre? Walk, walk, walk. With the exception of a few day trips in a rental car, we were mostly Sydney City Slickers and we loved it.

Hazel and I did a guided hike up the Harbor Bridge. The stairs are on the outside of the arches, all the way to the flags!! WOW. The bridge is 90+ years old. Stunning views on a gorgeous day. Sydney in all its glory. I kept thinking about the city officials and lawyers that had to be convinced to greenlight the climb-the-bridge business!! It’s been going since 1998.

We did a one-hour backstage walking tour of the Opera House. It is really something else. They were quite honest about some of the uncomfortable history related to the architects. What struck me was they let us sit with the discomfort. I think that should happen more when history is told. We need to reckon with the discomfort of history. There also felt like lessons about doing hard things. It is hard to build and create things that “can’t be done”. The design was deemed “impossible”. Inevitably any journey to achieve that kind of outcome will involve hardship and heartache. I just don’t think there are easy paths to achieving extraordinary things. Harder still when non-believers surround you. But in the end, one is left with something extraordinary. Sydney is left with an utterly iconic world renowned building and maybe a metaphor to encourage us to do hard things in our own lives, in pursuit of something extraordinary.

Hazel and I went to see Annie the musical. Love musicals. We saw the Snow White movie. The pre-movie ads were hilarious. Are Australians funnier than us? Cheekier? Do they have cooler corporate executives and laid back lawyers that let their funny employees make funny things? All of the above? We went to a 3-storey arcade downtown. We went to several different playgrounds. We shopped at Bondi Junction. We went to a virtual reality escape room. OMG. I had never strapped on a VR headset before. And the first time I put one on, it stayed on for almost 80 minutes!! OMG. Surreal. Disorienting at times. Cool. The Beginner escape room was hard!!

Sydney Playground vibes:

Surry Hill neighborhood vibes:

Surry Hill Saturday vibes, party on Australia, party on. By late afternoon everything had turned into one giant blob of a beer garden stretching for blocks and blocks. DJ’s everywhere. These people know how to party. My photos capture the more PG side of things.

Sydney scenes:

The downtown Sydney Lego store crushed their assignment: