Hall-Reppens in Singapore: Visiting Sydney's Olympic Park

In 2000, Sydney hosted the Summer Olympics. It was a bit tricky for them, as their Summer begins on December 21st. Luckily, their weather is pretty mild, unlike the seasons in Chicago, so they were able to host the Summer Games at the beginning of their Spring. Rich and I visited Olympic Park in January of 1998, and I was very impressed with their Aquatic Center, especially since the Olympics were more than 2 1/2 years away. The memory of the Sydney Aquatic Center made me very concerned when I visited the London Olympic Site in June of 2011, less than 14 months before the 2012 Summer Olympics there. At that time, London didn't have even 1 building completed. I told my friends in London that they should get into the construction business, because there was going to be a lot of overtime put into the Olympic Site, to be ready on time. It wasn't until this visit to Sydney's Olympic Park that I realized that the Aquatic Center is getting ready to celebrate its 25th Anniversary. That means that the reason that it was so complete was because it was built 12 years before the Olympics. Sydney had the luxury of having an Olympic caliber swimming facility in an open area. They "just" needed to build the rest of the Site around their existing facility, and get mass transportation out there. In contrast, London's Olympic Site was in the middle of the city. They had to demolish lots of lower income housing, and find homes for those people, with the promise that the Olympic facilities would benefit those same people in the future. When I watched the 2012 Summer Games, I was very impressed that the people of London had been able to pull it off!

When Rich and I went to Olympic Park in 1998, the only option to get there was a water ferry. According to the guide book, the train was the way to get there now. Erin was very disappointed, but I pointed out that water ferries wouldn't be an efficient method to bring millions of fans to the venues. We took the train to a certain stop, disembarked, and took another train directly to Olympic Park, and the Visitor Information Center was directly in front of us when we exited. They offered guided tours, but we were in a time crunch because we got a late start, and we needed to get up to the top of the Shangri-La Hotel to have drinks at sunset. We bought some post cards, and looked at the souvenirs that were still for sale. They had a couple of straw hats left, that were the same hats the Australian Olympians wore to the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. They even had 2 in Badger Red, but they were a Small and a Medium, so they were too small for my Badger.

Our next stop was the Novotel Hotel. We went to the top floor, and there were several balconies from which you could see the whole park. We were able to see the location of the Olympic Flame, as well as many of the sporting venues, and the housing for the athletes. After that stop, we visited the swimming venue. It is now a water park, with pools for swimming and diving competitions. It also has a skate park in back. It cost us each $3 to enter, and we weren't allowed to go near the lap or diving pools, but we did get to see hand and foot prints from swimming Champions, including Michael Phelps.

Upon leaving the swimming venue, we walked down Olympic Parkway. There, they paid tribute to every host of the modern Olympic Summer Games, including Athens, Beijing, and London, the 3 hosts after the Summer Games in Sydney in 2000. Erin had a great time walking all around ANZ Stadium. I didn't accompany her because I thought she was only looking for the Olympic Rings on the ground, and I had already photographed them from the hotel balcony.

We walked around a bit more, and took some more pictures, before returning to the train station. We had just missed the train by less than a minute, but there would be another one in 10 minutes. When we changed trains, we caught the express train to our stop in Downtown Sydney. As we exited, I noticed that there was an entrance to Woolworth's from the subway. Now I understood where all the people were coming in the store the previous evening!

By the time we returned to our room, it was 4:30 PM. With sunset at around 5:30 PM, that didn't give us much time to change into nice clothes and head off to our next adventure.