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Published: November 7th 2009
If there is one thing I learned from visiting Kyran in Melbourne, it is to accept people's generosity - especially when it is put in writing! Before we left to go on the tour in Alice Springs I emailed Kim, our friend from Tango night in Buenos Aires to see if she wanted to grab a drink when we visited Sydney. Her reply shocked me with its generosity. She said that she was out of town during the period that we are in Sydney, but that her apartment was empty and that we were more than welcome to use it. I was shocked because we had known Kim for all of five hours and yet here she was trusting us with her home!
I emailed her back accepting her kind offer and when we returned from The Rock Tour there was an email waiting for me with her address and directions on how to pick up the key. One of the girls from the tour told me that we were very lucky because the apartment was in one of the nicest areas of Bondi. Our luck was in then!
So we landed in Sydney and made our way to
Bondi. I will admit I was still expecting it not to be as good as it sounded - that the key wouldn't be there or something... but it worked like clockwork. We picked the key up from a set hiding place and let ourselves into Kim's home. And what a home it was. Beautifully decorated, lovely coast views and more space than we've had to ourselves in the last five months! We skipped around with delight and I was amazed with how quickly we made ourselves at home. It must be a side effect to travelling, how we get used to new places really quickly. We figured out the telly, the kitchen and the sleeping arrangements and then walked for five minutes to the main strip on Bondi to grab a takeaway.
Kim must be the only Australian living in Bondi, because for the four days that we were 'locals', I heard Irish accents and foreign languages all around me. The hairdresser was Irish, the grocer was Indian, the restaurateur was Italian and the bus driver was Asian. I loved the casual feeling in Bondi. Several people walked the streets in nothing but a bikini and most people wore
swimmers under their normal clothes. While having this laid back appeal there is also a great buzz to Bondi. People enjoy lunch in outdoor cafés and many of the restaurants are BYO (bring your own alcohol).
On our first day in Bondi we took it easy. We went for a walk through Tamarama Park which was literally five minutes away from Kim's place. The
Sculpture by the Sea exhibition was on and the park was thronged with people admiring the various funky pieces of art. We joined the queue of people weaving their way along the shoreline towards the main beach area in Bondi. It was an enjoyable way to spend the afternoon and in the end we treated ourselves to a meal in one of the many buzzing restaurants in Bondi.
While we could happily have spent all four days in Bondi and in our temporary new home, we knew we had to venture further afield. So the next day, armed with factor 50, a picnic, a list of thing to do acquired from Claire from the Rock tour, and our Lonely Planet book, we bought a weekly bus ticket and asked a girl (who turned out
to be Irish) what bus would get us into the centre of Sydney. We emerged at St. Martin's train station and wandered towards the Botanic Gardens.
The sun was shining, the park was filled with blooming flowers and joggers running for their lunch hour, and we had all the time in the world. It was one of those moments where we realised that we were on the other side of the world with no work to go to and nowhere to be. So we claimed a patch of grass and revelled in our good fortune as we ate our picnic.
We walked through the Botanic Gardens as far as the Sydney Opera House. As we snapped a few pictures in front of it, we realised that we are making good progress at seeing the iconic sights of the world. It truly is a beautiful building, although somehow not as big as I would have imagined.
Dodging yet more joggers we wandered around the perimeter of the building and made our way to Circular Quay Port. Our ticket got us on the ferries for free, so we took the ferry out and back to Watson's Bay, purely to
get a picture of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge from the water. Back on solid ground we walked as far as the Sydney Aquarium and paid a fortune to see some sharks up close.
The Aquarium is a great attraction, because you can walk in glass tunnels under tanks filled with all sorts of sea life. It also had lots of explanations on crocodiles, alligators and a host of other scary water creatures. It was enough to convince me not to step foot in so much as a puddle in this country for fear
something will want a piece of me!
It was getting late as we left the aquarium, so we made our way back across town and boarded the train to Bondi Junction. By the time we got back to the apartment we were shattered but content that we had got a decent flavour of Sydney's city centre.
The next day after I visited the (Irish) hairdressers, we hid in Kim's apartment as the heat outside was unbearable. At 37 degrees it was the hottest November day in Sydney for decades. Once it cooled a bit we ventured down to Tamarama beach where
Philippe enjoyed a dip in the sea while I admired the surfers.
On our final day in Sydney, we cleaned up the apartment before leaving to pick up our new campervan. While I was downstairs doing the laundry Philippe called me with the startling news that Kim was home! She arrived a day earlier than planned, but it was great, because it meant we got to catch up with her for a while. It was nice to see her and to thank her personally for her generosity, but after a while we had to let her get some rest after her long flight, and we had a campervan to collect!
We grabbed our rucksacks and made our way to the airport to pick up the van. Coincidently it is a carbon copy of Bitsy, so we have decided to call her.....Mitsy! As you can see she is exactly the same so it felt like coming home again.
Stay tuned for more adventures from us and Mitsy!
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Eileen
non-member comment
Definitely makes me want to go to the other side of the world...maybe..maybe