Darling Harbour, Sydney

April 22 the weather was much better, at least in the morning. I decided to wander west to see Darling Harbour which looked pretty interesting on the map.

On my way there I passed a unique looking complex called the Queen Victoria Building.

It is a Victorian-era (unsurprisingly) shopping mall which now has plenty of nice modern shops. I was quite struck by how similar it looks to Central European centers such as GUM in Moscow. Note the ornate floors and multiple unusual timepieces. Definitely not a typical mall.


I then proceeded to Darling Harbour, and it was indeed impressive. It's like the South Street Seaport in NYC with lots of shops and restaurants. Because the marina is semi-circular you can walk around it (and there's a pedestrian bridge over it). So in terms of view it is more like being in Williamsburg or Jersey City and seeing all of downtown Manhattan before you.

I think it has the best views of Sydney's Central Business District.

There is a maritime museum nearby so I walked around a bit. There were a couple of inetersting ships parked there. That submarine has a serious looking sonar dome...


I love the name of the destroyer...


Definitely not something to be trifled with. However, it's a risky name to give an allied ship - 'vampire' is the US Navy term for hostile inbound anti-ship missile. I only imagine the comedy moments on joint patrols when American watch officers would relay to their superiors that the Vampire was closing...

Here's a far more old-school vessel and a great view of CBD.


Note the shadow across the buildings despite the blue sky behind. The weather that day was fairly volatile.


You can see the storm clouds brewing to the right.

This structure fascinated me.


It's at the very tip of southwest Sydney called Miller's Point.. That entire area is a large port, and there are massive parking lots that abut the water. However there are no docked ships, no cars, and no cargo. So you have this enormous open space and then this huge Boat Traffic Control tower sticking up out of it. It clearly is there to track all of the comings and goings in Sydney Harbour and has at least one radar spinning on it. The architectural design of it is a bit lacking though as one can't help but think of a prison watchtower looming over everything... At least the cell antennae around the middle mean you get phenomenal reception.

At this point the rain started in earnest so I spent the afternoon reading my Economist under an outdoor canopy at one of the pubs by the water. There are worse ways than that to spend an afternoon....

On my way back I passed this sign on a bar door:


I especially appreciated the candor with respect to probability of winning.

After an uneventful dinner I let the jetlag pull me under.