Sydney Day One: Symphony and Soccer!

We arrived in Sydney a bit late on the 22nd. There'd been a mistake with the reservation, so rather than being in the dorm room that we booked, they gave us a private room with two single beds instead. Being in a private room was a nice treat, but it meant that we had to check out the next morning and move into the dorm. Not a huge deal, it just ended up meaning that we were kind of stuck at the hostel. Then it ended up really not being a huge deal because it started raining with a vengeance and Will and I decided to turn lemons into lemonade by doing laundry and soaking up as much free internet as we could.

The rain eventually stopped which worked out perfectly for us because Will had surprised me with tickets to the Sydney Opera House. He's as good at keeping a secret as my sister which is to say that he's not, lol. They both get so excited about the surprise that they can't help but tell you all about it. So I actually knew about the tickets a couple of weeks ago.

Will didn't own a suit so we went shopping for one during our whirlwind tour of Brisbane. And I didn't really have appropriate symphony attire either (I sent the little black dress that I got in Dubai home ages ago), but Rhian had given me a dress that I thought might work. I just needed to get something to wear over it since warm weather wear isn't working so well in Sydney's 12C/55F temps. Getting dressed up to go to the symphony was really fun; I put on makeup and everything! :-) Even Will got into the idea of dressing up and most guys don't usually go for that.

The symphony was fun, but I almost liked taking pictures of the Opera House more than the concert itself. Will and I were hamming it up and totally marking ourselves as tourists by taking cheesy picture after cheesy picture. I particularly like that we both wore Chuck Taylors to the symphony. Sydney is just laid back enough that it worked.

After the concert we made our way back to our hostel's neighborhood to a sports bar that we'd looked up earlier in the day. You see, with the time difference we haven't been able to watch any of the World Cup soccer games live - the USA games have been airing here at 4:30am. But last night they played against Algeria and it aired at midnight. We figured we were already out so why not? We made a pit stop at a 24 hour pie shop called Pie Face where I pretty much was in heaven and wanted to eat every sweet and savory thing in sight. We settled for a shared slice of cheesecake instead. :-) The England/Slovenia game was airing at the same time as the USA/Algeria game so it was a divided sports bar, especially since the outcome of each game could affect who moved on. Every time we heard the England fans cheering we had to quickly glance over at their screen to see what was going on (and maybe boo just a little bit). Eventually we were just too tired and decided not to watch the rest of the game. Unfortunately, that meant that, like ToadMama, we also missed the US game winning goal. Grrr, so frustrating. We found out the score this morning when we woke up.

If you ask me, not a bad start to Sydney. . .