What is this thing you call "Big City"?

Bill and I have never been on a vacation to a city. We have briefly passed through Los Angeles or SF or Minneapolis on our way to somewhere else more remote but we've never actually stopped and stayed put in one place for more than a few days. The closest thing I can think of is when we spent 3 days in New Orleans a year ago. Aside from that, and the hand full of brief interludes with Portland or Boston or Vancouver the idea of purposefully going to a large congested city was nearly as interesting to me as huffing paint fumes or drinking curdled milk. Unequivocally uninteresting, nay, revolting - and not worth my time. 

But then we came to Sydney. And we stayed 8 days in that same city. And it turns out Sydney is not like paint fumes or old milk at all! In fact Sydney is like perfectly creamy Camembert and salty breezes and and like the frenetic energy and simultaneous order of a disrupted ant hill. And actually, we have thoroughly enjoyed the cultural and urban discoveries of this big city. 

Below: the view from our neighborhood in Kirribilli. 

 

Bill and I had such a seamless passing through the Australian airport and customs that I might actually worry for their national security. Nobody even stamped my passport and we were through getting our visas, bags and on the train 40 minutes after landing. I didn't even have time to get hungry or grumpy. 

Our love affair with Sydney's culinary bastion of excellence began with a Lebanese spinach and feta pouch purchased at an airport kiosk. This piece of perfectly risen bread with impeccably salted and golden exterior was better than 90% of the food we had eaten in New Zealand. It may have been 15 minutes after this interlude with Sydney airport food that we decided our prior budget of $60/day would have to go for our week in Sydney as we were going to need at least double that to eat our way through one of the most diverse and fabulous food scenes in the world. 

Our host in Sydney is Philip, the same generous man who, along with his life partner, Judith, hosted us in Wanaka a month prior. When they heard we were headed to Sydney they casually asked "Oh, we have a flat there with an extra room.  You would like to stay there would you?" To which Bill and I telepathically instructed the other to maintain thencoolest of countanences and not let on that inside we were wiggling with the excitement of a 4 year old with a piñata and agreed that, yes, that would work just nicely. 

Philip and Judith, are likely the most well-read ,brilliant, high class, city-dwelling adventure junkies I will ever meet. They are simultaneously planning trips to walk through Africa with elephants and bike through Nepal while giving university grade personal lessons on oyster shucking and wine tasting as well as historical lessons on bird conservation strategies post-cyclone and how sailors learned to calculate latitude and the intracasies of coal mining in Australia and its impact on global warming. I actually had to tell Philip at one point that I wasn't paying attention anymore because my brain was too tired from learning new things. 

Anyway, Philip and Judith made some fantastic recommendations on food and drink and we were not disappointed. He also contacted his local fisherman connection and acquired 48 un-shucked Sydney Harbor oysters for us to have with a nice dry Reisling on one night. He is a class act. 

We rented bicycles for the week and used them to explore a handful of Sydney's many sprawling suburbs.

We biked through beach towns without pretense. Through business districts with stock market suit wearing execs having a pint at noon and over bridges with jog-commuters (now you've got nothing to brag about bike-commuters) who run to and from work with a backpack and business suit hanging from the pack with a carabiner. We biked through ferry terminals and touristy wharfs with over priced fish and chips and happy hour drinks. We visited old Victorian neighborhoods with newly decorated graffiti art walls and hipsters who look like the Allman brothers and Amy Winehouse at the same time. Through old tight knit communities in the blue mountains and through scuzzy industrial train track riddled wharehouse districts.  

 

 

All the while sampling local beers and coffee, tapas, cheeses, Chinese yum cha, seafood, veggie bowls and breakfast eggs poached in balsamic reduction, local wines and old fashioneds. Nothing was disappointing. Everything was fabulous. 

There's an alluring energy to big cities and I'm starting to understand it. At any given time there are people moving by foot or bike or motorcycle, by Uber or bus or car or train or taxi, by ferry or sailboat or cruise ship. People swimming or jogging or roller skating or playing frisbee or volleyball or surfing or kite surfing. There is no shortage of a physical energy transfer between the city and its people. Though I still think I prefer the imaculate stillness of a snow covered tundra, there is no denying that a city carries in it an organism of living and breathing exchange between its inhabitants which is so intriguing as to make you want to stay and get wrapped in it for a while. 

 

The newness of it all and the pleasant marital harmony we've been enjoying have made for a really lovely stay-cation if you will. A nice break from the constant traveling mantra we've had the last 3 months. It's been so comfortable to spent a rainy day inside the flat and not worry about where we ought to be off to next. 

Speaking of, we fly to Hobart, Tasmania tomorrow morning. We will not have a vehicle so transport will be by bus or bicycle. Plans are still being formed but the resumption of the new-day-new-city way of life beckons and we must follow our instincts into the next big city-less adventure.