Sydney: Bondi Beach and The Rocks

In terms of sheer oddness, it's right up there with Eugene's "Mini Pet Mart", which sells pet foods and cigarettes. 

This is the beach, the access ramp to the beach, the wall behind the beach, and buildings behind the beach. 

This is facing... uh, in some direction.  

This is facing in the opposite direction from the last picture. The seawall in the original Bondi picture is to the right of this field of vision.

Note the ominous clouds.

Yansa, sand, houses.

Note the ominous clouds. 

Like anyone would want to swim when it was 55 degrees, anyway.

There were ominous clouds in the sky, but they didn't make the picture. But they were there.  

It started drizzling on the way across the street from the beach.

Then it started raining.

Then it was something for which Oregon has no descriptive words.

(Although, thinking back, I might've experienced somewhat similar rainfall in Pendleton, once, before it started hailing.)

The 2000 hit song "You've Gotta Love This City" by The Whitlams describes this sort of precipitation as "not falling, but collapsing at [one's] feet", which is adequate to describe what happened.

You can see the rain in the background, but it had mellowed substantially since the time our clothing had been drenched. 

Mucho agua. 

This is me at Nando's Portuguese chicken restaurant at Bondi Beach, after about 15 minutes of walking around in the rain trying to find a cool restaurant.

Nando's was definitely cool. I had the chicken something-or-other, with mild sauce, with fries ("chips", in Australia), and it was good. Their ketchup ("tomato sauce") was spicy and good -- all Aussie ketchup is spicy and tastier than US ketchup, but Nando's was especially good.

Australian Coca-Cola... it's not the same as in the US. If you like Coke in Oregon, drink Pepsi when you visit Australia.

This is myself and Riçk in a historic area of Sydney: The Rocks. This is right down by the famous Sydney Harbour, and it's within viewing distance of the famous Opera House.

If you turn left here, you can go to Macca's! (Macca's = McDonald's)

The car in the background is not a police car. It's a taxi! Australian taxis look like US police cars; they're the same model of car, they've got colored lights on top, and they've got police-looking symbols on the side of the car. Even more confusingly, Australian police cars also look like US police cars! Australians can tell the two apart, but even after two weeks, I had a tough time doing so. 

I'll give you three tries ;)

Sydney Harbor is in the background, as well as the famous Sydney Opera House, one of the world's most beautiful buildings.

The boat is a replica of the HMS Endeavour; the original HMS Endeavour brought somebody famous to Australia (but I can't remember who they are -- was it Captain Cook? Lachlan Macquarie? Kylie Minogue's ancestors?)