Olympic Tales
a tale of two weekends (pt. 2)
After my weekend tales-of-woe, here’s a bit of a contrast…
Dear James,
Just thought I would write to let you know about my weekend – I actually got to go to Sydney to soak up some of that Olympic atmosphere! Well, I was watching the opening ceremony of the whole thing on the TV and decided on the spur of the moment to nip down to Sydney – well, it just seemed so close!
I managed to bed my head on Sally’s floor (she says hi, btw) – she is staying with friends of hers while working at the Games, so I didn’t even have to pay for accomodation…
Saturday was spent with Sally and Phil, ambling around the city, soaking up the atmosphere. There are five or six ‘live’ sites where they have big screens showing the action, and the crowds were big enough at each so you really felt like part of the action. There is also some entertainment at each site, and down at Circular Quay there were these guys dressed up in funky seventies gear, wearing stilts and pushing a turntable around, pumping out those funky disco tracks that you love. One of them even told my how funky I looked in my sunnies…
On a completely different track, we spent an hour or so in the sun listening to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, live in the Domain (yeah, your frisbee park!), which was really nice, and then we headed down to the Opera House through the Botanical Gardens, being real tourists!
(The highlight was when we asked one girl to take a photo of us, and she pointed it at herself, and was trying to look through the lens – I mean, come on…!)
After homemade pizza (well, homecooked anyway), we headed back into the city, visiting Martin Place, the Rocks and generally avoiding the ‘soccer-type’ crowds that seemed to have descended on Sydney. I even got to see Amy, a friend of mine from Uni, but because the pub was so full, she couldn’t get out, I couldn’t get in, and we had to talk over the back of this bouncer’s shoulder until he got pissed-off enough to stop us. It was all very strange!
We got up to Bondi on Sunday, saw the Beach Volleyball stadium and did some sunbathing with Angela (another friend of mine from Sydney), Sally and Amy (who turned up later). I spent the evening down in Darling Harbour and around Central station at some of the other live sites, eating chicken pies and being overwhelmed at how much warmer Sydney was than Melbourne at the moment…
On Monday I really wanted to visit Olympic Park and see the flame. Everyone had told me that it was nigh on impossible to get in without a ticket, so I queued up for four hours to get a ticket to Egypt vs. Netherlands baseball game later that evening (for only $10!), and headed up there. And no-one checked my bloody ticket! But at least I got in there for an hour or two, took loads of photos and finally realised that, yes, I was at the Olympics!
Well, mate, it sounds like I had a better one than you…!