I do not like Sydney (at least not today)

Again, I'm sorry Calli!!! :( Let me explain. Yesterday, my last day in Melbourne for a while, was wonderful. Richard dropped me off downtown around 8 am and I checked my large bag at the Traveler's Aid office at Flinder's Street Station (which is awesome by the way! They pretty much help you with whatever you need, and they'll hold a bag there all day for $5, which is super helpful). I spent about 9 hours walking around Melbourne: I went to the Carlton Gardens

and the Melbourne Museum,

and wandered all over the city to parts I hadn't seen before and parts I had seen many times before (like Fitzroy Gardens, St. Patrick's Cathedral

and my old home, the Hyatt). I also bought shampoo and stopped in a book store and read the last 50 or so pages of Enduring Love. :) Then I went to an internet cafe down the street from Flinders Street Station and I was able to upload my pictures (some of you may have seen them), which was rad but it took FOREVER! I had to upload them onto the computer there, then upload them to facebook, and it took about an hour to finish everything.

This is where things got crazy. I was supposed to go to Southern Cross Station (one stop away from Flinders Street) 90 minutes before my train left, which was at 7:55, so I was supposed to be there around 6:30. I had planned on being there with plenty of time to spare but once I got going with my picture uploading mission and it was taking way longer than I expected, I rationalized that the 90 minute thing was just a suggestion and I waited for the rest of my pics to upload before I ran out of the internet cafe, back to Flinders Street, and then got on a train to Southern Cross. Well I was right and I was wrong. I should have been okay getting there 10 minutes early but when I showed up at Southern Cross and went to the window to redeem my Ausrail pass for the train journey, they told me the BUS had already left. Uhhh ... what??? It was only 6:45 so I should have been 45 minutes early, but the woman explained that they were doing work on the rails so the train had been replaced by a "coach" to Albury (3 hours away) and then we would switch to a train the rest of the way to Sydney (7 more hours!!!). But I had to find other transportation to Sydney because they had already left -- since the coach takes a little longer, they had to leave an hour earlier, and they had called me to tell me about the change. Only I had my US phone shut off. When they had originally e-mailed me and asked me to provide a phone number in case they had to get in touch with me, I e-mailed them back and explained that my phone would be shut off and I didn't know what my phone number would be in Australia, so their only way of contacting me would be e-mail. They wrote back that they would make a note of it, and asked me to write back and provide my Australia phone number when I got it. I forgot to do that, and apparently no one ever made a note that they should e-mail me instead of calling so I never got the call. So I was freaking out at the train station, telling them I needed to get to Sydney, no matter how they did it -- I didn't care, but I wasn't going to pay extra, and I really needed to get to Townsville by Friday so I wouldn't miss the music festival. The women picked up the phone and called the bus driver -- and they were still there!!!! It was a Festivus Miracle!!! Some crazy lady (I found out later) had delayed the bus for her own crazy reasons, so I lucked out. I had to RUN,  carrying all my stuff, about 200 yards to the far, far end of Southern Cross, where the bus bays are. I made it!!! :D

The bus ride was pretty cool. I tried to sleep a little, read a little, listened to music, and for the last hour or so talked to the bus driver and another kid who was riding up front. It was good times. Then I got dropped off in Albury and got on the train and it was terrible! Thankfully I had two seats to myself so it really could have been worse, but the seats were terribly uncomfortable, I could not sleep at all (maybe 3 hours total, like 20 minutes at a time, during the entire 7 hour trip, and I was already exhausted from the day) and there was a baby crying in my train car for at least the first 45 minutes.

I arrived in Sydney this morning at 6:55 am EXHUASTED and cold and needing a shower. People had asked me what I was going to do in Sydney for 8 hours and I was like "I'll walk around the city!" (How fun, right?) It never occurred to me that it might be raining the entire day. So I walked in the rain to a hostel to see if I could shower and use the internet ... nope. Tried another one ... nope. Okay that was my fault; I should have known they don't want random people who aren't staying overnight just hangin out, jeopardizing the security of the place. Fortunately the hostels were right across the street, and the guy at the second one suggested I go down the street a few blocks to the aquatics center -- "it's only $2 to use the shower, pool and sauna all day." That sounded great!! I could last 10 minutes in the rain. It was over a mile and it took me 20 minutes because of the rain and the fact that I backtracked once. :( Okay, yes, I am directionally challenged, but I this city is confusing!! I miss the perfect grid of Melbourne. I was completely soaked when I got to the Ian Thorpe Aquatics Center but I decided to make the most of it and get my $8.20 worth (yeah, it wasn't $2, but oh well). I locked up all my stuff, took a shower and then went back and forth between the jacuzzi (which was more like a semi-warm pool with jets) and the steam room for about an hour and a half. Then I took another shower and got ready. Mercifully, it wasn't raining anymore when I started walking back to the station. I was so happy! But then it started raining again when I was about halfway back (of course). Terrible times. and I could have checked my large bag at the station before that whole thing but I needed my bathing suit and a change of clothes and shower stuff so I decided to bring it all with me. Ugh. I'm still sleep-deprived and now I'm completely exhausted physically. I really hope I'll be able to get some decent rest on the train to Brisbane today. Wish me luck please!!  

I'm planning on coming back to Sydney in a few weeks, and if I don't make it then, I'll be back here in January. I really hope I begin to love this city ...