Bondi to Coogee and Everything Between

12-30-05
My Dad mentioned over break that I am very poised. I thought about that when I woke up this morning and tried to figure out how I was going to convince everyone to go to the beach with me rather than walking around Sydney for the day. Fortunately, my friends aren’t into travel books as much as I am, so they weren’t prepared with plans for the day. They loved the idea of going to the beach for the day. They even signed up for the walk between beaches.

Breakfast at Hungry Jack – The sign is different so it doesn’t count as a trip to Burger King. I took a picture of the sign though because I do think it’s funny that the BK Lounge is now the HJ Lounge. Only people from Lancaster will get that reference, sorry.

Bondi (Bond-I) – My travel book says this is where the celebrities live. Well, if that is true, then they must be poor celebrities. I think B listers live in better digs than the ones in Bondi. The beach served as an excellent people watching location. The guys appreciated one particular Brazilian girl (their assumption, not mine) who didn’t have tan lines up top. As it turns out, the guys wanted to go to the beach because they heard the ladies would go topless. I knew they agreed a little too easily!

Coogee (Ku-G)
So, the idea was to talk a four mile walk from Bondi to Coogee. As many of you know, I try to cram as many experiences as possible into a vacation, and the walk seemed like a required journey. First, I will bet my life that the walk was more like 6 miles when you consider the 12000 coves that we walked around. Second, walking with all of your beach gear in 112 degree weather is NOT fun. Third, my travel book didn’t bother to say that the walk was almost purely uphill. My feet look a little better today (New Year’s Day), but I ended up with sun poisoning on my feet thanks to this walk. I’m working on not allowing myself to be grumpy and this walk was quite a test. I almost succeeded in being cheery the entire time, but I think some amount of grumpiness was acceptable under the circumstances. Alan, Mr. Iron Man / Super Hiker / Super Camper, couldn’t understand why us girls couldn’t keep up. Men! All complaining aside, the walk was beautiful and I loved every minute of it (minus the middle). We saw four beautiful beaches and a cliff side graveyard. The above ground graves gave me a good chance to tell my ten-foot pole story from New Orleans. For those who don’t know, when someone dies in New Orleans, they are buried in a tomb above ground and when they put the next person into the family tomb, they use a ten foot pole to push the bones to the bottom of the tomb. The saying “Wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole” came from this happening. There’s your trivia for the day.

Pam and I attempted to shop for a while, but we weren’t very lucky. The shops close early on Friday. For dinner, we went to Cargo on Darling Harbour. The food was crap. The Caesar dressing tasted like plain mayo. We were exhausted from our day in the sun, so we went to bed pretty early. We scheduled our trip to the Blue Mountains with a 7:25 AM pick up and we’re old, so we needed some sleep.