In Australia, not going to the beach on Sunday is almost a sin. So we follow pretty much half of Sydney to Bondi Beach, the city’s iconic patch of sand.
Let’s be fair: Bondi is a lovely beach and certainly more than a “patch of sand”. Sure, it’s packed because it is summer Down Under and the kids are out of school but it’s still a great place to soak up the sun and relax.
The highlight of our two days in Newcastle was the Blackbutt Reserve (funny name, I know!), located outside the city. Getting there by bus wasn’t easy but it was well worth it: we met the Australian fauna!
Australia has changed. We can tell by the Coke bottles.
The first thing we did after clearing customs at Sydney airport was to buy a Coke, since we were both thirsty. It costs AU$3.50 and we found that expensive, considering the Canadian and the Australian dollars are roughly at par and that a bottle of Coke is less than CA$2.00. But we figured it must be because we bought it at the airport, where everything is more expensive.
On Monday night, we packed our bags again and returned to LAX to catch our flight to Sydney. The entire security process took about 5 minutes:no immigration control, no passport stamp, the bags were simply x-rayed and we didn’t have to go through the body-scanner non-sense. Morale of the story: getting into the U.S.A is hard but getting out is piece of cake.
I was curious to see the other side of L.A, the glamorous one. So far, I wasn’t too impressed: houses looked nice but nothing out of the ordinary. I certainly couldn’t picture all these movie stars and socialites living here, in Korea Town or in Little Armenia.
We headed to Venice Beach and had breakfast in a small sidewalk restaurant, from which we could observe people coming and going. This is one of the best spot I have ever seen for candid portraits and street photography—locals seemed oblivious to what was going on around them and simply kept on rollerblading, running, singing or whatever activity they were into.
