Freaking Sweetest Day Ever

So we met downstairs to get on our tour of the city around 12. So we cross the street and find this freaking sweet ass bus. Lemme 'splain.... so we see this black bus sitting across the street and start hearing some thumpin' bass coming from it...it's a double decker party bus complete with disco ball on the first level. We board and all go to the second story and we just go through the town with music blaring, us jammin, and beautiful Sydney all around us. Because of the World Youth Day happening, we had to take a different route than planned. We went up the coast line, visited Bondi Beach, went farther north toward the entrance of the bay. Saw great skyline of downtown Sydney and saw a lot fo the residential area. Culture Observation #1: So there are 3 house designs here. There is this adobe-like house look (red tile roof), there's very simplistic houses, and there are very modern looking houses. Strange. We went to a place called Gap Park. Place is actually this beautiful set of cliffs that looks out on the Pacific...and is a huge suicide point (go figure). Great view, large drop.
From there we got back on the bus and went into downtown. We saw things like the Sydney tower (that we're going in tomorrow) and a Coca-Cola sign that cannot be change because it's somehow become a historical landmark. It also apparntly kinda marks the area of the red-light district. For those of you who don't know, prostitution is legal here. other fun sights were a 3 or 4 story Mac store and of course the Harbor Bridge and opera house. We actually sat on the bay right next to the opera house eating lunch. Afterward, we got back on the bus and were dropped in the middle of the city for the actual walking tour. We started in Hyde park lookin at the ANZAC memorial (australia new zealand armored core) and continued walking through there seeing tons of the World youth day pilgrims. Saw the plaza(?) that the scene from the matrix with the woman in the red dress was filmed. From here we went to the Botanical Gardens. This was beautiful. The welcoming sign is unlike any natural garden or park you'd ever see in the US. It basically encourages you to get on the grass, picnic, hug trees, smell flowers, etc. Walked futher in and saw the hundres of hanging wombats in the trees. Lots of beautiful wildlife, gorgeous. Continuing through the gardens we walked in front of the Opera House (it's huge...really really huge...why, i don't know). By now it's about 5 pm (feels like 9-10pm) and we get on a public bus to head back to Coogee where we're staying. We're basically all running on E and are dead tired. Merlin encouraged us to try to stay up till 9 at least 8, so that's what I'm currently doing by typing this. We went out for dinner after watching a little TV, which leads to Cultural Observation #2. They have about 5 stations here, with very limited TV. It's either bad TV, American TV (they had simpson on), or stuff like Australian rugby (which we are watching now). We went out to eat at a Thai restaurant which was extremly good. We includes me and the two guys I'm rooming with in the hotel room. We ate, we talked and i avoided sleep. Cultural Observation #3 The tipping here is also extremely different. You don't tip unless it's good service, and then it's 5%, or if it's a nice restaurant 5-10%. Also tax is included. So here's the weird concept: the price you see while seeming like much more is exactly what you pay...not 2-3 dollars more. It puts you off at first sight, but afterward it's kinda nice.

Two appologies for the blog thus far. 1) I took about 114 pics today but can't post them because i have about <1 bar of internet in my room that i'm stealing. 2) For the almost list format of what we did. It was a long day and we saw a lot, so that was cool, but it's way to much to go in detail about w/out writing chapter names or headings.

So good night to all!