A Raining Day - 下雨天
March 5
We bought two Opal cards for local transportation including train, light rail, bus and ferry. It had a daily cap of $16.15. Today’s weather forecast was not very good; it rained all day but we still went to the Manly Beach via ferry. There were nice stores and restaurants along the beach. But because it was raining and windy, there were not many people on the beach. After walking for ten mins or so, we felt cold and decided to find a place to sit down and have a warm latte and half dozen of oysters. After the rain and wind seemed to slow down a little, we continued to walk along the beach in the rain. People were still surfing and swimming in the ocean. We ended at Shelly Beach and had another latte and half dozen of Sydney Rock Oysters and shrimp flatbread at the Boathouse café. Today was not the day to stroll along the beach. The weather was just not cooperating today. It just reminded us of the weather issues during our partial world cruise.
Manly Beach
We’ve hesitated to go on any cruise for last 30 years because we were afraid of motion sickness. But this time, we thought since we sailed through the Drake Passage in the last Antarctica trip, we should handle this trip well. Even with prescribed patches for motion sickness, we don’t think we’ve overcome motion sickness. If there was one negative thing about this trip, it was the motion sickness. It bothered us a lot. First, the patches had some side effects to deal with. Second, with >100 knots wind and 30 ft waves bombarding the ship, we just weren’t able to do anything except lie down on the bed. Weather issues also resulted in missing two ports and two sounds. Crossing the Tasman Sea was extreme. At the time, four major storms were converging on the path over the Tasman Sea. The captain decided to skip Hobart port and go up north to avoid the storms. Although no one said anything, we believe we were actually hit on the spots when the storms changed its course. The ship was shaking really hard even though the stabilizer was on over the night. We were a little scared then. Once the storms were over after the Milford Sound, the sea became calm again.
Once we were back to the hotel, the rain stopped. We had dinner in the hotel using $100 dinning credit they gave us. After dinner, we rode the L2 light rail to Chinatown then transferred to the L1 light rail. The plan was to go to the Fish Market and then walk over to the Darling Harbor, but instead we got off at the train at a stop before the Fish Market. To our surprise, the stop was underground. We didn’t even notice that the L1 light rail had already went underground from the surface. We were lost. We walked one direction towards the water but the streets were dark. Then we walked the other direction to a main commercial district as a couple advised us. We walked over Pyrmont Bridge into the Darling Harbor. The Darling Harbor looked like it had much more of a night life than in the Town Hall or the Ferry Terminal. There were a lot of things going on at night in Sydney. We really like Sydney.
Darling Harbor at night
