So, I suppose I could have done some of this sooner, but it has been a busy week. So I will just collect everything from this week here, and then do this again some time next week.

Let's start with a few general random notes and observations.

To start with, this is the perfect time of year to visit this part of Australia (Sydney). And I say this part simply because I can't judge other parts. Spring has only just started here, but to me as a Dutchman it feels like summer. And not the heatwave type of summer. No, the nice summer days.
Second, it feels like Sydney is actually somewhere in Asia. Now, this is in part because I'm in a hotel at the edge of Chinatown. But elsewhere too almost everyone you see is Asian. I did not expect that.
Also, you know that typical Australian accent you always hear on TV? I'm not hearing it at all. Only from guides at the tourist attractions, and they do it on purpose.
And lastly, a bit of an annoying thing. My Dutch bank card is accepted almost nowhere. At least they do work in ATMs, and I am with Australian friends who can back me up.

So that's some general stuff covered. Now let's go through the days and see what I've been up to. Oh, by the way, I'm very bad at consistently taking pictures, but on some of the days I took quite a few. And I can always leech pictures of my friends here for the locations I didn't take pictures of. I will post the pictures later, at which point I will decide if I'm going to filter them, or be lazy and just dump them all in a few albums.

Anyway, let's start. For the record, the first date is friday 20 September 2019.

FRIDAY / SATURDAY - TRAVEL
Well, that didn't start of so great. At the train station in Leeuwarden I already found out that the train to Schiphol wouldn't go all the way. A person had been hit. (We all know what that means...) So I got the train to Heerenveen, then the bus to Emmeloord, then the bus to Lelystad, and then the train to Schiphol from there. Thankfully I arrived only half an hour later than planned, with plenty of time to still make it to my flight.
And the flights went very smoothly. I ended up flying with Cathay Pacific simply because of the combination of flying times and price, but I found that they are quite good. You could even ask for snacks in between the scheduled meals. One of them, the cup noodles, came with chop sticks, but I managed.
When I landed in Hong Kong for my layover, the sun was just rising. It was between 6 and 7 am. Of course, back home it was close to 1 am...
I landed ahead of time, close to 8 pm on Saturday, local time, at Sydney airport.
And then things got a bit hard again. I was going to take the train from there to Central, where I would meet up with my friends Galener and his sister, who were also about to arrive, but I need to get a so-called Opal card to use public transport. And my card to pay wouldn't work. And this wasn't because of the aformentioned issue that it's simply not an accepted card. I was referred to my bank, but didn't know the number, and wi-fi wasn't working. I could still text though, and with a bit of help from my dad and @Galener, who both ended up finding the same number, I managed to contact the bank. They turned on worldwide payments for me, which I had neglected to do before my trip.
Things went smooth after that. I met up with my friends, and we went to the hotel.

SUNDAY
To get acclimated a bit to the new timezone, we started out slow on Sunday, and stuck close to the hotel, and just visited some shops. Of course, I can not pass on toy departments, and ended up finding a couple of Transformers which I know I would never find back home.
After that we took a train. Taking a train here in Sydney mostly means underground, but it's simply called train. Also, throughout the week we ended up using the train a lot. Most interesting places are at a decent walking distance, but it's still a faster way to cover a lot.
So we took the train to Circular Quay (pronounced key - I would not have guessed). This is where the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge are located. I would end up seeing them a lot, as, as it turns out, many locations that are interesting from a tourist point of view are either around here, or reached from here. (Sydney is huge, but as you get farther away from the harbour, you end up in the suburbs, which are really just living areas.)
While wandering around the area, we ended up watching a guy doing some humorous acrobit street show. We got there just as he was starting. I probably would make this way too long if I described everything he did here in text, but suffice it to say it was a good show.
After that we went closer to the Opera House to take a good look. It's quite a striking building.
Moving away from the Opera House we went to and area called The Rocks. This is the oldest part of Sydney, and there's a stark contrast between the buildings here and the tall, modern buildings that are basically right around the corner. One street in The Rocks was filled with a market, where of course a lot of typically tacky, touristy souvenirs could be found.
That covered the day, which left the evening. Galener and his sister love going to an arcade here in Sydney that happens to be located very near the hotel, so we went there. As it's pointless for me to get a membership card, for me that means I mostly watch, or play using their cards. At least it's cheap for me that way.

MONDAY
Monday morning we took the train to Darling Harbour. This is a bit more modern area, again, obviously, at the water. Here we could see some warships, as the Maritime Museum is located here, but that is not what we came for.
Also located here is Sea-Life. As you would likely guess, it's a large aquarium. Also easy to guess is that this place houses fish and other sea life found in and around Australia. For example, they have a mini Great Barrier Reef set up. A bit of a contradiction there. Other highlights include a dugong (very similar to a manatee or seacow) and some large sharks.
Almost next to Sea-life (Madame Toussauds is in between) is Wild-life, run by the same company. This is a relatively small zoo showing only animals indigenous to Australia. Kangaroos, wallabies and koalas are there of course, but they also cover a wide range of insects, spiders, snakes and other reptiles. After all that, you really wonder why there even are people in Australia. But, on the other hand, there are small furry creatures like the quokka and the rabbit-like bilby who are actually friendly towards humans, even in the wild. And the quokka just look at you with the silliest smile.
The last stop on Monday was the Sydney Tower Eye. This tower offers a 360 view over all of Sydney, and you really get a good idea of how large this place really is. It was also nice to see the places I had already visited, and the ones I would see later.

TUESDAY
First we set of to Circular Quay. Like I said, a central spot. From here we took the ferry to Manly. For about half an hour, this ferry slowly takes you away from the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, giving you a better view of the larger area they are located in, as they become part of the Sydney skyline.
Manly is part of Sydney, but it gives you a completely different feel. I likened it to a tropical island, and indeed the main attraction is a very nice beach. We just set there for a while.
After taking the ferry back, we walked past the Opera House, and into the Botanical Gardens. This is a large park with quite a diversity of trees and plants. Now, I really don't know anything about such things. All I can say is that I'm quite sure I saw some trees that I've never seen before, and that we had a nice and relaxing time wandering around here.

WEDNESDAY
Wednesday started very similar to Tuesday, as again we got on a ferry leaving from Circular Quay. This was a faster and shorter ride though, taking us to a spot where we got on a cable car, which in turn took us to the entrance of Taronga Zoo.
Now, I already went to Wild-life on Monday. This however is a much larger zoo, and where in Wild-life you follow a laid out path, here you are free to wander. Of course, the Australian wildlife is present here as well, but so are other animals. I suppose it's fair to say in this way it's like many zoos. I will mention a couple of highlights. As we wandered around, we happened to end up being just in time for a show with seals. This was very well done, and it's interesting to see how well they can be trained, and how much they seem to enjoy it. Of course, that might be just the treat of a fish.
Another highlight are the tigers. They have a pretty large area set up for this, and to enter it, you have to go through little show where you are inside an airplane travelling to the tiger's home country (yes, I forgot the country). Annoyingly, this show includes a projected travel guide who is from that country, and as such speaks with an accent that is hard to understand when English is your second language to start with.
There are some cubs in the tiger area, but... we didn't see them.
One other thing to note about this zoo is the location. I already mentioned that we reached the entrance by going up in a cable car. The entrance is actually at the highest point. From many spots you can actually see towards the harbour, and get a great view of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge from a distance.
Taronga Zoo is large enough to take up most of the day. In the evening we went to the arcade again.

THURSDAY
On Thursday Galener's sister had some other things to do, so I visited some places with just Galener. We could take it easy in the morning, because we were going to Paddy's Market, which doesn't open until 10 am, and is actually close to the hotel.
Paddy's Market is a large inside market, which is ridiculously cramped. I think I would quickly start to feel claustrophobic if I spent all day inside one of the stands. It's also a tourist trap. There are stands with cheap souvenirs everywhere. Now, before I made my trip here, I asked if I should bring anything that I might not have though of already. I was told that because of the sun I should bring my hat. I was then met with surprise when I responded that I don't have a hat. So I got myself a hat at the market. I haven't used it yet, but even if I don't end up using it at all, it makes for a nice souvenir. It's a proper Australian hat, even shows a kangaroo inside.
After a quick stop back at the hotel we went to the Chinese Garden of Friendship. It's a nice area in the style of a traditional Chinese garden (I'm sure you didn't guess that), which is very different from all the modern tall buildings surrounding it. The center of the garden is formed by a large pond, and there are a lot of water dragons (type of lizard) found here. We also came across a Dutch couple here, so Galener heard me talking gibberish.
While walking around, at some point I noticed an artsy metal tiger in the grass. And then we noticed more animals. At this point we started to realise all of the animals from the Chinese zodiac should be there, and we found ten out of all twelve. (Side-note: my sign from the Chinese zodiac is the goat... now isn't that nice.)
A bit earlier in the week I realized that, while I had seen the Harbour Bridge, I had not actually been on it yet. So from the Gardens we walked towards Circular Quay, and got on the bridge. During this walk it really hit me how much the streets in Sydney go up and down. Once we got far enough on the bridge we could see a large cruise ship in the harbour. It was the Maasdam, from Rotterdam. I figured I could have gone to Australia that way too.
We didn't go any further than the pylons, where the arch starts. The view was already great from there, and continuing would juet be a very long walk which wouldn't add much.
In the evening Galener's sister was back, and we went to the Sydney Observatory. This observatory holds the oldest still working telescope in the southern hemisphere. While it was partially clouded, we could still see Saturn and its rings through it. Through a more modern telescope in another dome we saw Jupiter and some of its moons.

FRIDAY
As I'm typing this it's Friday again, a week after I left home. Today was the first day spent outside of Sydney. We took a two hour train ride to Katoomba, a place in the Blue Mountains area. From there we took the bus to the Scenic World attraction. The bus takes you to a central visitor area, and from there there are three ways to continue. I'll just cover them in the order we went.
We started out taking the Skyway. This is a large cable going over the beginning of what is the very large valley of the Blue Mountains. Technically, the "mountains" here are not tall enough to be true mountains. But let's go with that anyway. For someone from the flat Netherlands they are close enough. And several of them can be seen in the distance from this ride, and and around a valley of rainforest that is one and a half times the size of Grand Canyon.
Anyway, the Skyway gets you to a point high up, where you can follow paths against the side of the mountains, giving you a great view of the valley. From many vantage points you can also see a large formation of three jutting rocks, known as the three sisters. There is a story behind this, but I will skip that here.
After exploring here for about an hour and a half to two hours, including the return, we took the Skyway back, and then we went down into part of the rainforest, taking the Railway. The Railway is at a 52 degrees incline, making it the steepest passenger train in the world, and it didn't take long to take us down. This track was originally used to bring miners down, and one of the first thing we passed was the (no longer used) entrance into a coal mine. After that we went onto the Walkway, which is described as the longest elevated boardwalk in Australia. There are a few options, and we went for the longer walk that this boardwalk offers. What I noticed is that there is a fair amount of damage in this rainforest, and seems that lightning is the cause for all of it. Signs say that thunderstorms are common, and they usually last about twenty minutes. We came across a lot of storm shelters.
We went back up by taking the Cableway, a large cable car. As this cable car goes both ways, this actually the third way you can continue from the start.
We took the bus and train back, and I've spent the evening typing this.

UP NEXT
This weekend will be spent back here in Sydney, as we are going to visit Oz Comic Con. This will be going on for both days.
And then, on Monday, we will take an eight hour train ride up to Macksville, where Galener and his sister live, and where I will spend the rest of my stay in Australia.

TO BE CONTINUED...