I woke up early today but a comfortable bed and knowing that my day would start with laundry made it easy to snooze back into dreamland for a while longer.

When eventually I did rise I went hunting for the hotel laundry. A single washer and dryer it was hiding on another floor only accessible from a different wing of the hotel, a lengthy trek to find. $4 in coins for a wash, another $2 for detergent and I only had $5 in coins on me. I went for the detergentless wash, an option that wont have helped an issue encountered while hanging my clothes to day.

By then I’d been out of the hotel, found coffee, returned and spent a good quarter of an hour rigging a washing line. The wire framed sides of the balcony had holes too narrow for fingers, making feeding a line through easy but feeding it back nearly impossible. I ended up using tweezers from my pocket multi-tool to retrieve the line, pull back enough to properly draw it through.

Hanging my clothes I found that a shirt that had mysteriously acquired a strange dirt mark had progressed to a full multi-inch smudge of dirt. Ten minutes of scrubbing with a bar of hotel soap didn’t help terribly much, so perhaps a second shirt relegated to the dark recesses of my case, waiting for my return home to stain remover and a proper wash.

The hotel breakfast options weren’t great so I’d been out for coffee, a nearby coffee shop catching commuters from the station and also offering distinctly Australian sandwiches.

Returning to my hotel it seems #metoo hasn’t been encountered by Australian recruitment practices.

Laundry on the balcony to dry I went for a walk. A Chinese garden, fountains for children to play, mostly deserted. Beyond it Darling Harbour, a tourist hub, branded eateries and international theme tourist exhibits. I skipped them all, went to a museum. $32 for entry felt expensive but did include access to a Daring class destroyer, the sight of which had yesterday made me decide on this option for the day. That was in itself probably worth the entry fee but there was a whole museum there too, plus a submarine (entering and leaving which hurt my knees badly) and a reproduction of an 18th century Bark that Australians seem to feel is important to their history.

Comically everybody trying to board one of the vessels was being told to put their bag into a locker, especially the children, but the many attendants just waved me through, my leather camera bag clearly deemed important to me without word or action from myself.

Boarding the reproduction my brain immediately accepted the presence of a diesel pump as an obvious improvement on the original design yet rebelled at the masts on the ship. I queried those with a museum volunteer who confirmed that they were a composite design, unfaithful to the solid wood original. Apparently they’d ordered solid wood masts but the dry heat of the shipyard had caused them to dry and crack even before being fitted so for safety and functional purposes they’d replaced them with composite wood masts. I accepted this as appropriate; 18th century shipbuilders would’ve gone composite too had they access to modern woodworking methods.

The ship also had engines, but I’d skipped going below to see those. My knees were too sore from the submarine to take on another steep ladder inside a ship.

It wasn’t just the restricted entry and exit to the submarine (oddly angled tunnels with badly placed ladders) that had caused me pain. Just holding a camera in my hand for a couple of hours caused my arm to ache, a clear sign that all is not physically well. A running nose merely confirmed that whatever I had I still have. Before exploring the rest of the museum I decided to stop and rehydrate, found the museum’s cafe, found it packed with noisy children.

Outside the museum I found a shipping container with a hole in it, a man inside serving coffee and sandwiches. A coffee from him and I sat amongst large balls, enjoying the shade and a rest from the constant walking.

Returning to the museum I found that rarest of things, modern art that’s actually intelligent, beautifully creative and created, and quite awesome. They don’t do a miniature version that I can install at home 🙁

After the museum I decided to find some lunch, heading back to the hotel while keeping an eye open for appropriate options. The Chinese Garden was now full of children playing in the fountains and water, as you’d hope they would on a hot Sunday.

One small girl sat in two inches of water in her nappy, raising a whole series of questions regarding design, efficiency and effectiveness, then stood again and chased a gull which ran out of the water, turned to look at her with a glare, realised she was still chasing and ran further away. I’m sure she had a parent or other carer nearby but they didn’t interfere, happy to let the wildlife take on the burden of entertaining the child.

Sydney has so many bridges I ended up on a bridge under a bridge, looking at a bridge.

I continued walking, found myself in Chinatown, no different to the rest of Sydney, the same number of Chinese people, the same types of shops and restaurants, the only difference the relative prevalence of Chinese characters on signs.

There’s an easy way to differentiate Chinese people from the Australians that only look Chinese: The locals acknowledge and show courtesy to other people around them, smile at you, share those social niceties that make negotiating a shared space so much easier and friendlier.

I reached the hotel before finding somewhere to eat so checked the menu in the hotel’s restaurant. It’s more a cafe, and not even open after breakfast. Instead the kitchens support the hotel’s bar, open to the street, but the menu for that looked well priced so I gave it a go.

This proved a fine choice, the menu offering basic Australian options, variants on British pub food. I went for bangers and mash and they turned out to be quite excellent, good value by Sydney standards and definitely meeting my immediate needs.

People that get hung up on how food looks are idiots. This tasted marvelous.

The afternoon was spent in a relaxed state in my hotel room, balcony door open, washing mostly already dry, studiously assuring I wouldn’t run foul of any New Zealand import restrictions on vodka. This is, incidentally, my excuse for any spelling mistakes on today’s update.

The evening merely continued that progress, online chat with friends and other acquaintances then the deep unconscious sleep 3/4 litre of vodka offers, waking at 5.30am in surprise that outside there was daylight. I closed the curtains and went to bed.