SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Mrs. Macquerie's Chair at sunset, Sydney Harbor, Australia

The first time I visited Sydney, Australia, I told my friends I wanted to see the sunset from Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair. I’d seen pictures on Instagram and everyone just raved about it being THE place for sunset. So our first night out, we went in search. Through Chinatown, caught the Light rail to the harbor, walking from the bridge allllllll the way around to the Opera bar. We had a couple of drinks and laughed until the sun was low enough in the sky and set out for what I thought would be a quick walk to the location.

Well that quick walk around the perimeter of the Royal Botanic Gardens felt like it took forever, not just because of sheer size but also populous, mostly tourists also flocking to the “it” sunset spot. We raced to where I thought the chair would logically be according to the sun’s position but as we approached, I realized my friends were still walking. And although we were now turning away from the sun, I followed obediently because obviously they must’ve known something I didn’t. We kept walking around the edge of the peninsula and as I expected us to turn up the hill, surely to higher ground, we abruptly stopped. Looking around stupidly, it took me a full minute to realize we had reached Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair, the one I just had to see at sunset, the one I just wouldn’t shut the fuck up about.

In case you don’t know me, let me shed a little light on one of my nastiest traits: I’m impatient. Extremely impatient. Amplified exponentially with dread, regret, and enough anxiety to stop a horse’s heart, I’m always running from one place to another in a hurry nowhere. You’d think I was bred from New York’s finest.

“I thought you wanted to see the chair?” my friend asked as I stood there dumbfounded.

“Well yes, yes I did, but why the fuck is it facing east” I pondered as I began mathematizing the angle of the sun in the sky with the growing shadow over the water compounded by the price of my plane tickets times the fact that I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about squared. I descended into utter panic. She, however, walked over to the chair and sat on it, looking out over the water, answering her emails, really taking in the moment despite my own catastrophic meltdown as I made the realization that everything I read online was a fucking lie. Eventually she popped up and sauntered over to the grassy knoll behind us without a care in the world…and with plenty of time to see the sunset.

It’s hard to gauge golden hour in Sydney in the middle of winter. The sun sets at an angle away from the skyline and by the time its decently colored, the sun has receded behind the skyscrapers of the CBD and everything in Sydney Harbor is cast in shadow across the water. There was nothing that could be done for my pics. I couldn’t get the sun to magically move over for me so I could take a nice photo and in the end, my photos looked like a Helen Keller rendition on Jackson Pollock.

It wasn’t until I was home months later, pouring over the pics in Lightroom trying to adjust gradients that I realized… I never actually sat in Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair. I flew 18 hours in coach, took 11 puddle jumpers up and down the coast, just to stand in front of this now famous place, and I didn’t even walk the 20 additional feet to sit down, even just for a minute. The photograph tragedy could not be helped, it was out of my hands. But what could’ve been helped was my attitude. I was so caught up in what I was supposed to be accomplishing that I lost all sight of what I was doing: being a dick. I could’ve stopped for five fucking seconds and relaxed. I could’ve sat down in Mrs. Mac’s Chair and simply absorbed the moment. I could have let my delusions of grandeur fall to the wayside and enjoyed myself for just five minutes and realized this was a trip most people don’t go on in a lifetime.

And so, if you ever make it all the way down under and find yourself wandering around Sydney, do yourself a favor: find a spot and sit the fuck down.