The quest for coffee

Friday, Nov 6

We arrived in Christchurch, NZ last night at about midnight. Sydney seems to have passed in a bit of a blur of jet lag and sheer utter exhaustion from all the walking we did. They have a bus system there, but damned if we could figure it out. You can’t get on the bus unless you have already prepaid for your ticket. Convenience stores sell the prepays, but they don’t know the bus schedule nor the fares for the various locations, so you are left to guess. In the end, we decided it was easier to just walk everywhere. After the first day we discovered the free shuttle bus that runs around the main part of the city, depositing tourists at the various sites, so we took advantage of that as much as possible. Of course we went to the harbor and saw the Opera House and their lovely harbor bridge. There is a beautiful botanical garden that runs straight through that part of town and we spent quite a lot of time walking and snapping photos in there.

Would you care for a $4 cup of coffee? This was perhaps one of our biggest challenges… trying to find a regular cup of coffee. There are coffee houses galore in Sydney and they all make a lovely cup of expresso or cappuccino, but try to get a regular cup of Joe and you get all manner of blank looks. “You know, coffee? You brew it into a pot and then pour it into a cup???” Hmm… guess not. The coffee houses do a fresh press with steamed milk, which is really nice, but it takes about 5-10 minutes to get your cup of coffee. And it costs $4. McDonald’s is where I had the most interesting coffee experience (they have free wifi so we were parked at a table). I went to the counter thinking for sure I could get myself a cup of black coffee and then cream and sugar to my heart’s content. So I ask the kid for a cup of coffee. He comes back with “espresso or capucinno?” I’m confused and say, “just coffee please.” The girl working the counter next to him gives me a smile and a pitying look… poor dumb schmuck… doesn’t even know what she wants. Turns out all the coffee is dispensed from a machine like what you find in a Holiday Station Store where you punch the button for your various pre-sweetened beverage. Apparently “flat white” is the code for a plain cup of coffee with cream (actually, I think it’s steamed milk). So he brings me my coffee and I ask him what the coffee pot on the counter behind him is for (this being the standard coffee pot you would see in nearly any gas station, hotel, restaurant, etc). It was standing there with what appeared to be freshly brewed coffee. “Oh” he says, “that’s for iced coffee.” Go figure. So now I’m drinking tea.

I’m a little fuzzy on my days here, but I think it was Wednesday when the entire city of Sydney went all out for the Melbourne Cup – a horse race that seems to be along the lines of the Kentucky Derby. It is THE thing to see and be seen celebrating the event. We began to notice early in the day that there was a preponderance of women sporting whimsical feathery hats, flowing dresses (except for those women who were wearing REALLY tight, REALLY short dresses) and extremely high heels. As we sat waiting for the bus, I asked a couple of women what was up. Oh the Melbourne Cup. Of course, the race itself is in Melbourne, which is quite some distance away, but like the Academy Awards, that’s no excuse to not party. So everyone was off to their respective venues to party like crazy for the afternoon. The race was at 3:20pm, and I think it was over by about 3:22pm, so the pause in partying was really quite acceptable. I kept having visions of Eliza Doolittle hanging over the rail shouting “come on Dover, move your arse!” Later in the day I was recalling my time in Alnwick castle and the Duke’s swank Christmas Party. All the swell invitees, the local lords and ladies I imagine, arrived wrapped in mink and sparkling with diamonds, hair and makeup perfect, clothing impeccable. By the end of the night, though, we were witness to the remarkable spectacle of the well-to-do barfing in the bushes just like us common college kids.

Wednesday was the day we took the ferry to Manly Beach, which is about a ½ hour ride across the harbor. It gave us a nice chance to get on the water, where we hoped we could find a cool breeze, but no such luck. The temps were soaring – record high they said. I can’t do the conversion in my head, but it seems to me 39 celsius is in the neighborhood of 100 F. That “cool breeze” we were looking for felt like a blowtorch. As soon as we got off the ferry, we got our shoes and socks off and waded in the harbor. The water was very cool and sure felt nice. There wasn’t much to do in Manly other than just poke around, but we did happen upon a little restaurant called The Interpolitan just off the main drag where we had a fabulous meal. I had a marinated lamb salad that came served on a Greek salad with big chunks of feta, loads of kalamata olives and a very yummy yogurt dressing. Mmmmm.

One of the days we bought tickets for the Cityseeing bus – a hop on hop off double decker, so we got a good look around the whole of Sydney. I will say this, I think Minneapolis is more interesting. It’s really just about like any other big city, and once we saw the Opera House and the harbor and the botanical garden, we had pretty much seen everything of interest to me. And it’s terribly expensive! I don’t know if all of Australia will be that pricey or if it was just Sydney. I guess we’ll see…

Rita