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I said that Brisbane reminded me of LA. But many of the buildings reminded me of New Orleans, with really ornate porches and balcony railings. That holds true in Sydney too.
Took the train to King's Cross yesterday, walked around, saw more of that type of building, walked down to the coast but it was occupied by a military base, feh. Bondi Junction where I'm staying seems to mostly close at 9 PM like Brisbane, but King's Cross stays open later. On research, apparently it's a red light district that got hit by lockout laws forcing bars to close at 1:30 AM or 3 AM, rather than even later, with businesses complaining about how that would kill them. Granted bars in Brisbane did stay open past 9, but their kitchens (in my limited sample) did not.
Today I took the 380 bus to the end of its line. Sydney buses don't tell you the next stop either. People were slow getting off, waiting for the bus to stop before getting up. Lots of surfboards, this is beach country. Australians often call "Thank you" to the driver even when getting off at the back.
End of the line is Watson's Bay, also Robertson Park, Military Road. There were quaint looking beach-style businesses, and a general store complete with old-timey typeface. I had some fish and chips, meh. (Are they ever not meh?) There's another military base up one ridge. I walked around, saw some rocky beaches, headed vaguely home walking up a road until a bus caught up.
Staring out into the Pacific had some mental effect. You're just gazing out into the distance and there's nothing but water. No ships in that direction either, far from the harbor. You're gazing toward the north island of New Zealand but it's too far to see any sign of, except maybe clouds and i doubt that. I'm a 23 minutes walk from the beach (though not that part), which I think is as close as I've ever been. SF had me 3 miles from the ocean, I worked in walking distance of SF Bay and Boston Harbor but those are bay and harbor, Mallaig was pretty close to the coast but again harbory, NYC Chinatown might have been a mile but again that's Hudson River more than Atlantic. But here a modest walk will take me to endless ocean.
As for the bus, then I realized that it was getting dark and I was near the coast. Can I has stars? I can has stars! Slipped into Gap Park, where a bunch of trees screened me from streetlights, and obviously there are no lights to the east across the ocean. It certainly wasn't desert-dark but wasn't bad for being in a metropolis. I saw Scorpio pretty well, Alpha Centauri and its neighbor Hadar, two stars of the Southern Cross, and a very definite satellite. Then a bright fast object that I wasn't sure if it was a satellite but it didn't look like a plane -- no blinking, heading to nowhere (SE, probably south of NZ.) Possibly a shooting star or two but if so they were very brief.
I took what Google claimed was the last 380 bus back, at 20:44, but the driver, Transit app, and Moovit all disagree. Even Google itself is confusing: stops further had buses listed until midnight, and an outbound bus had stops all the way out, but those stops themselves still showed no buses. Weird. I noticed the bus has a TV screen switching between camera shots of the bus interior and exterior. So they have the display, now if they only piped in something useful, like the next stop...
Once home, I tried identifying satellites. Ka-ching! https://in-the-sky.org/satpasses.php?town=2147714 for 19 Oct 2019 shows CZ-2C R/B matching the first satellite in path and time, and ISS for the second one. Though it felt faster.
Took the train to King's Cross yesterday, walked around, saw more of that type of building, walked down to the coast but it was occupied by a military base, feh. Bondi Junction where I'm staying seems to mostly close at 9 PM like Brisbane, but King's Cross stays open later. On research, apparently it's a red light district that got hit by lockout laws forcing bars to close at 1:30 AM or 3 AM, rather than even later, with businesses complaining about how that would kill them. Granted bars in Brisbane did stay open past 9, but their kitchens (in my limited sample) did not.
Today I took the 380 bus to the end of its line. Sydney buses don't tell you the next stop either. People were slow getting off, waiting for the bus to stop before getting up. Lots of surfboards, this is beach country. Australians often call "Thank you" to the driver even when getting off at the back.
End of the line is Watson's Bay, also Robertson Park, Military Road. There were quaint looking beach-style businesses, and a general store complete with old-timey typeface. I had some fish and chips, meh. (Are they ever not meh?) There's another military base up one ridge. I walked around, saw some rocky beaches, headed vaguely home walking up a road until a bus caught up.
Staring out into the Pacific had some mental effect. You're just gazing out into the distance and there's nothing but water. No ships in that direction either, far from the harbor. You're gazing toward the north island of New Zealand but it's too far to see any sign of, except maybe clouds and i doubt that. I'm a 23 minutes walk from the beach (though not that part), which I think is as close as I've ever been. SF had me 3 miles from the ocean, I worked in walking distance of SF Bay and Boston Harbor but those are bay and harbor, Mallaig was pretty close to the coast but again harbory, NYC Chinatown might have been a mile but again that's Hudson River more than Atlantic. But here a modest walk will take me to endless ocean.
As for the bus, then I realized that it was getting dark and I was near the coast. Can I has stars? I can has stars! Slipped into Gap Park, where a bunch of trees screened me from streetlights, and obviously there are no lights to the east across the ocean. It certainly wasn't desert-dark but wasn't bad for being in a metropolis. I saw Scorpio pretty well, Alpha Centauri and its neighbor Hadar, two stars of the Southern Cross, and a very definite satellite. Then a bright fast object that I wasn't sure if it was a satellite but it didn't look like a plane -- no blinking, heading to nowhere (SE, probably south of NZ.) Possibly a shooting star or two but if so they were very brief.
I took what Google claimed was the last 380 bus back, at 20:44, but the driver, Transit app, and Moovit all disagree. Even Google itself is confusing: stops further had buses listed until midnight, and an outbound bus had stops all the way out, but those stops themselves still showed no buses. Weird. I noticed the bus has a TV screen switching between camera shots of the bus interior and exterior. So they have the display, now if they only piped in something useful, like the next stop...
Once home, I tried identifying satellites. Ka-ching! https://in-the-sky.org/satpasses.php?town=2147714 for 19 Oct 2019 shows CZ-2C R/B matching the first satellite in path and time, and ISS for the second one. Though it felt faster.