Change In Plans

SYDNEY ICON

Greetings from Sydney, where the local time is 3:55 am. We are experiencing the worst jet lag, by far, that we have experienced on our trip around the world.

We sort of powered through our first 24 hours in Australia: stayed awake until about 9 pm, tried to minimize the wee-hours running around, woke up early, and had a very full day. All best practice in jet-lag mitigation.

Again, two nights ago, we stayed out as late as we could tolerate, and even let the kids watch an hour of TV when we got back to the hotel. In bed at about 10 pm, with big plans for the following day.

At some point in the night, either India or I pulled all of the drapes tightly closed. The next thing we knew, it was nearly 3 o’clock in the afternoon, and we were still asleep in the darkened cavern of our room. 3 pm! Generations of early-rising Puritan ancestors spin in their graves.

To be fair, India had gotten up at the crack of 1:30 pm, and gone for a run, leaving the rest of us slackers (or bludgers, as the Australians call them) to sleep.

We went for a beautiful coastal walk from Bondi Beach down to Bronte Beach, all four of us feeling out of sorts. I went for a swim in the ocean, and then we went for a great early dinner at Icebergs, which is justifiably the most famous restaurant in this part of Sydney. Icebergs sits perched above the south end of Bondi Beach, and serves things like buffalo mozzarella “air freighted in from Napoli.”  Because it was a hybrid breakfast, lunch and dinner meal, we all ate ravenously and well.

After dinner, we walked around Bondi Beach again for as long as we could stand it. We bought Zola some slip-on Vans (with black-and-white checks), and raided the local bookstore for the rest of the ‘Artemis Fowl’ series.  By 9:30 pm, we were back in our room, where I (very unwisely) fell back asleep for a couple of hours. At about 11:30 pm, all of us were again wide awake: Zola plowing through ‘Artemis Fowl’ #5, Lu dancing around and singing “I’m not sleepy!” and India and me having an overdue talk about life, the future, and everything.

India and Zola fell asleep at about 3:00 am, and now Lu and I are sitting on the floor of the bathroom, trying not to disturb them. Tallulah maintains, “I’m not sleepy!” It may be wishful thinking, but perhaps there is slightly less conviction in her voice than there was an hour ago.

We will get ourselves on track tomorrow, and get out to see more of the city. I don’t know why the 9-hour difference from Cape Town has crushed us in a way that the trips to Ireland and Spain did not.  Even the 13-hour time difference to Tokyo was easier to adjust to than this. Maybe we are getting soft.  

Here is a sample of my dialogue with Tallulah:

“Tallulah, are you tired?”

“No, Daddy.”

“Tallulah, are you tired?”

“I have a giraffe dress and a cheetah dress too.”

“Tallulah, are you tired?”

“Daddy, why do our mouths have so much spit in them?”

“Tallulah, are you tired?”

“This is a big, huge bathtub. My baby is not tired either. I’m hungry.”

“Hello, Hungry.  Are you tired?”

“Daddy, remember when Mommy wore those super high heels, and she was taller than you?”

“Tallulah, are you tired?”

“No, Daddy.”

“Grrrrrrr.”

I am making good progress in reading Denis Johnson’s “Tree of Smoke.”  Maybe I will start Artemis Fowl when I finish, so Zola and I have something to talk about.