G'day Sydney
Top of mind
“The first day of a trip is always a wash” I say to myself in my hotel room unpacking my shoes still soaked from the kjet. At this point in the trip I’m 4 weeks deep. Trip 1 was thoroughly planned out and executed with my partner, Trip 2 was planned by a 3rd party and executed with a busload of americans and 2 Aussies, and Trip 3 is not planned at all and completely solo.
And it feels weird! It’s been 6 years since I did a full solo trip (you can read about it here) in Sydney of all places.
I had a dream I diverted my flight home to New York back to Japan.
10/25
The best views I had of Queenstown, maybe of New Zealand, was on the takeoff flight from Queenstown to Sydney. Like 2-3 minutes of being inside of a mountainside atop the bluest of blue lakes, but in a plane. I felt like Indiana Jones in Temple of Doom. I miss New Zealand NGL!!
First impressions of Sydney:
The CBD (Central Business District for my weed friends) feels like a club in North Williamsburg with the buildings akin to the NYU area.
There’s kids fishing everywhere along the water and I think that’s pretty cool
I walked by like, gotta be 5 or 6 wedding receptions and 2-3 prom boats on the water
Every single restaurant was bursting at the seams with people and live music, and I walked for like 2 hours.
Looking at the Sydney Opera House is surreal, like it felt like I was having a dream about visiting Australia. Like the type of dream you have when you know you’re going somewhere in the future and the excitement seeps into your dreams – you’re there but there’s no specifics on what you’re doing.
And the Opera House is one of those things that has a crystal clear distinction. Like a place Santa would fly over in montage shots. Or a thing you would draw in 3rd grade geography class. So I just sat and stared at it for 15 minutes, not before having a full on photo shoot with a kind person who offered to take my picture twice in a row (aka 2 separate photo shoots).
Feeling totally foreign, I walked around for a bit and returned to the hotel, grabbed a drink, and immediately started plotting out the things I want to do and when they will happen. Shoutout the plugs: my Aussie friends from the New Zealand trip, the Power Rangers Reanimated Discord Server, fashion substack blogs, and Reddit.
What I ate
One last mince and cheese pie for the road (runway) in Queenstown. Hokey Pokey chocolate on the flight featuring fried chicken flavored chips. Some of my Japanese gummy stash. And several cups of water.
Ate some P.S.P. (Pretty Shitty Pizza) while wandering Sydney, washed it down with a citrusy negroni at the hotel + sunset combo. Ate a slab bar which was like if an Ice Cream Sandwich and a Nilla wafer had a surrogate baby and it was the most beautiful thing. Also picked up “Skittles Clouds” sour, and not sure if these have hit the states yet but they’re not quite clouds, more like soft sour gummy worm texturally.
What’s next
According to the bulleted list I messaged myself, today is laundry in the morning and exploring Marickville, and then BEACH MODE walking Bondi to Coogee with my Patagonia baggies.
