Just Shy of the Equator: Sydney - Hitting up the Tourist Traps

We flew Tiger Airlines to Sydney. Tiger is super budget airline, and just about anything you'd expect has a price. You can pre-pay for your checked luggage, in 5kg increments. At the airport, as we found out, the price is significantly higher. We ended up paying $60 for a checked bag, more than the price of the ticket itself. And the lady made us weigh our carry-ons to make sure we were under the 10kg limit, too... very strict.

My cousin Vipul picked us up at the airport. The last time I saw Vipul, it was in May, when he, his wife, and son, came to the US and spent a few days in LA right around graduation. Before that, it was probably 1997, so it was great seeing him after all these years.

Kavita was working out of the Sydney office which was pretty easy to get to from Vipul's house. I had a good amount of work to do too. Plus, while I was in New Zealand, I found out that our building in San Francisco won the Condo Conversion Lottery. Being that it was our 2nd year in the lottery, the odds of winning are just shy of one-in-a-million, and what was expected to be a 10+ year ordeal suddenly jumped a decade ahead of schedule! So there was plenty of paperwork to deal with for that as well. Our days in Sydney were busy working, but we did manage to get out in the evenings and on the weekend to explore this awesome city.

Us with Vipul, Darling Harbour

We signed up for a "Tour and a Show" package at the Sydney Opera House. The lady at the counter was convinced there was no "Tour and a Show" package, despite the flier that was pasted onto a window no more than 2 feet from her nose. And then, she kept trying to overcharge us, so I had to bust out my fast math to defeat her. If you go to Sydney, and you're new to opera, this was a pretty good choice, though. You get to learn some history of the Opera House, which is a very impressive building and story, and then the show is a 90 minute medley of some of the more well-known excerpts from classic Looney Tunes cartoons... I mean classic operas.