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Published: November 20th 2015
Sydney harbour bridge
See those little dots at the top of the bridge? Those are people doing the bridge climb- in cold, drizzly weather. Holy crap those people are nuts.Since we are working during the week and only have the weekends for travel (not much is a quick little day trip), we narrowed down the many places to go/see in Australia to Sydney and the reef (Cairns). Those are our 2 weekend trips (already having scratched off surfing and the Gold coast the past 2 weekends). That means we'll have to skip Melbourne (which sounds like it's mainly cafes and artsy spots), Tasmania (not really sure what's there), Perth (don't think much of anything is there, but it's completely different), Darwin, and the outback. We also have to skip New Zealand. I'm happy with our choices though, and am trying to get the most out of them!
So Sydney. Much like any country's city, Sydney had that typical city-vibe. We decided to make our trips as economical as possible and booked flights to arrive really early and leave late so we'd minimize hotel nights. The first shocking thing about this trip was the experience at the airport. In stark contrast to our last experience at the airport here, this was a breeze. Not once did anyone EVER check our IDs! And apparently that's normal, as evidenced by everyone's reaction
Tiles of the opera house
A close up of the tiles that cover the opera house. They actually came from Sweden and are white and beige. at the clinic the next week when we asked them. Also no one checked our boarding pass until we got to the gate and were literally getting on the plane. So really anyone could have gone through security (say goodbye to a loved one, meet someone at the gate, go shopping at the ridiculously high priced stores, etc). Makes sense, actually. If you have to go through security anyway, who cares if you have a boarding pass? Wish we did that in the states! And not checking IDs means I could have sold my ticket on Craigslist haha
We arrived in Sydney at 8:30am (they observe daylight savings, so it's an hour earlier there). They have a fabulous public transportation system so we hopped on the train, which went almost straight to our hotel. We stayed at a cute little boutiquey hotel in Kings Cross, which is a neighborhood near the Rocks, where the opera house is. We didn't have much on our "must-see" list besides the opera house, so it seemed like a good place to base ourselves. Nice little street with lots of restaurants, but not too far from a questionable area. Potts Point is a little
View from the bridge
It was a whole lot of opera house that day! more posh, but we wandered through there too. The day was rainy and gray, and quite cold (everything is opposite here -- the farther south you go, the colder it gets. Also opposite: driving--shifting with your left hand is still really weird--, which way to look when crossing the street, there were handicapped signs with backwards wheelchairs, even the hangars on the racks were pointed the other way!) so we decided to start with the opera house since it's mostly an indoor activity.
You can see the opera house from many places in the city if you're high enough. The first thing that struck us was how tiny it was compared to the other buildings. We just assumed it would be massive, but it's really not. It is very iconic though. We took the tour, and landed a tour guide who has probably been there since it was built and was putting me to sleep. Most of the tour is actually watching an educational video. We were not impressed. It was cool to see the inside, and cool to watch the videos, but the guide added almost nothing to the tour, and really the whole thing was quite underwhelming.
Another view
From the front, with the Sydney central business district way in the background (inland) Highlights: they had a contest for the design and the winner was chosen from the discard pile (Danish guy). It was started in the 1930s but not finished until the 50s, during which time the lead architect was "reassigned", which seems to have been a sad/bittersweet occurrence. He died recently without ever coming back to see his finished product (there was no love lost there). Turns out building the arched roof was more of a challenge than they thought and took years and more than one construction company to even figure out. The answer was to use thin vertical slabs to create it, not long horizontal unwieldy slabs. It was built for form, but not function, which means it sucks as an opera house (according to our guide). Not built with acoustics in mind. The roof is all tiny tiles, some cream-colored, some white.
We finished our tour with lunch in the overpriced cafe in the bottom part of it along the water. The seagulls were ferocious there and would literally take things out of your hands if you turned your head. They need to hire someone to come up with a solution there - that's seriously insane. Overall
The bridge
Has lanes for traffic, a walking path, bike path, and train. I'd say if you're in Sydney, see the opera house, but I would never recommend GOING to Sydney to see the opera house. Extremely underwhelming. Meh. With that said, I'm glad I saw it...So maybe it's worth seeing once.
From there it was still cold, even at midday. Boo for weather not cooperating. We wandered around a little and went to our second Ugg store. Since it was the weekend, they had the big flea market going on at the Rocks, so we went there next. It reminded me a lot of the flea market in New Orleans down by the French Quarter, just slightly different shops. It was a great way to spend a bleh afternoon! And very close to the harbour bridge, which was also on our short list of things to do. We scored some awesome locally made licorice. It grows well here (licorice root) so it's fairly common. He had some really unique flavors and did lots of tastings! Unfortunately must of his flavors included chili, which I'm not a big fan of, so I skipped most of those.
The harbour bridge is also iconic, and slightly more impressive than the opera house. There's
Cute view!
From our hotel room. Looks like we could be in Europe somewhere. a very touristy (and insanely expensive) bridge climb that we opted not to do. Weather was terrible, and it seemed like a lot of money and effort just to get a good view of the city ($200+!!). We just walked across the bridge instead. Also a really good experience with good views! Again, don't come to Sydney for the bridge (unless you're really into architecture), but if there, walk across it! Nice view of the opera house too.
We rode the train back over it and back toward our hotel. What a cool commute that would be if I lived here - ride across the harbor bridge and look at the opera house every day. I'm sure it would get old fast, but still cool. We officially checked into the hotel and found our giant room with a cute little European-looking view. We vegged out for a little (we'd been up since 4am!) and just stayed local for dinner. Yet another early night -- noticing a theme? haha
The next day was also cold and drizzly. Two other things on our list were Manly and Bondi beaches. So much for that! The public transportation here has a free
Rainy day
Photo from the restaurant in Manly where we waited out the torrential downpour. Opal card (card is free but you have to put minimum $10 on it) - it allows you to ride the bus, trains, and ferries. They have several really cool promotions with it (permanent promotions I think). There's a daily max - usually around $15 I think, but on Sun it's $2.50! That means you can ride all day as many buses, trains, and ferries you want for a total cost of $2.50! Freakin awesome. That just happened to be the day that we decided to take the ferry to Manly. Score! So we trained to Central Quay (pronounced "key"), which is where the opera house is, and hopped on the Manly ferry - all for $2.50! We timed it well too and only had to wait 9min for the ferry. Again, how cool would that be if that was my commute to work! I guess it would be like taking the Staten Island ferry (which I still think would be cool -- Paula you can disagree here if you want haha). The ferry was a nice comfortable ride with plenty of seats inside, and nutballs on the front deck (as soon as we started moving they got very cold
OMG nutella
Don't judge me. Haha. That donut thing on top had nutella in it and was amazing. The shake, not so much. I've been really unimpressed with shakes here (craved it once and now chasing a good milkshake because they've all sucked). I think you might have to ask for something special here for it not to be watery. Lost in translation and very wet and all came running back inside haha) It was about 30min to Manly with some nice views of the harbor (which is huge).
When we left it was just gray and cold but when we got there it was starting to rain. We got our bearings, with a little help from the visitor's center at the wharf, and decided we would go to the quarantine station and museum next. Unfortunately the bus to get there JUST left, and while we were waiting the torrential downpour began. We popped into a nice restaurant just inside from the bus stop while we waited. We had a quick snack (see that amazing picture) and were on the bus to the North Head Quarantine Station.
Manly is normally known for its beautiful beach and the very scenic beach walk. That was not the day for it. Instead, we explored the North Head Quarantine Station, which had a very cool history, and a neat museum. From 1832, it operated until 1984 as a quarantine station for ships coming in that had infected passengers. On arrival to the city, if a ship had report of one of a list of infectious
On the Quarantine Station
I'm not sure if that was an original structure, but I'm guessing it's been upgraded over the years since the place is still used for functions. The yellow buildings in the background are true to what it was (upgrades over the years) diseases (typhus, smallpox, etc), the ship was diverted to the isolated quarantine station. There, all passengers were examined by the medical staff (physician and nurses who lived on the island), and separated into sick and healthy. Sick were kept in the infirmary area. Healthy were sent a little farther up the station to the living quarters (still trapped on the peninsula). They were kept there (all passengers and crew) until the incubation time for that illness was passed. If someone in the healthy area comes down with the disease, the clock resets. Some people spent a few days, some spent a few months. All of their luggage was disinfected as well. The people in the infirmary were disinfected with 5% phenol showers (we use phenol for chemical peels, and it can cause a REALLY nasty chemical burn. At 5% people complained of irritation, but that was it. Though I bet they looked a little refreshed haha). Some people described it as hell, with horrid conditions, while others wrote about it as a fun vacation. Seems to have depended heavily on when you were there. Over the years many improvements were made (at first there weren't even buildings, nevermind bathrooms).
Luggage funicular
Wish it was still a funicular! They used to send the luggage up that way. Glad we only had to go down! Went up a different way. It was a nice little museum (very small one!) with interesting history. The area is still open today, and is frequently booked by companies for retreats/conferences, or oddly by people for weddings. What a weird place to get married. They also do ghost tours, which apparently are really good according to trip advisor. We skipped that one.
We walked back to town from there instead of waiting for the bus. Not a bad walk in the cool air since the rain had stopped. It was a little sunny by that point. When we got back to Manly, we popped into the 4 pines brewery for a bite and some beers. Great little respite before catching the ferry back to Sydney proper. All that travel and only $2.50!! Ahhh I love frugality. 😊
On our way home we stopped at one of the 2 main revolving restaurants. It's less known so not as touristy (we got tipped off by an American ex-pat who worked at the flea market) It's called Orbit, or O Bar. Very expensive so we just had drinks. Made for a nice relaxing stop though! And over the course of a couple hours we made a
Writing on the wall
The passengers and crew interned there would carve their insignia into the wall. It's been preserved. complete revolution with nice views of the city. From there we just grabbed dinner by our hotel - great little Italian spot! Another early night, and early morning.
Good thing we had an early morning, because despite that we cut it close on a 10am checkout! What a crazy early checkout time. We didn't even realize it until we happened to be down there checking out just before that. It was finally a nice day!!! We left our bags at the hotel to go out exploring.
We walked through Hyde Park, which was very nice on such a gorgeous day, on our way to the Hyde Park Barracks museum. It's a neat little museum telling the history of Australia as a penal colony. They claim that it used to be shameful for people to trace their roots to convicts (not everyone who came over to settle was a convict - also orphans, poor, single women, etc). People would erase whole lines of their family tree. Sometime in the 1970s or 80s it started becoming a badge of honor, and now people are proud of tracing their heritage. Most of the convicts were small crimes (stealing bread, etc) and
The Lusitania!
They were there too! I recently read a book about that ship (Dead Wake by Erik Larsen. Highly recommend!) most people went on to live productive lives here. Interestingly, the island is not incredibly diverse (minus tourists). Perhaps partly because until fairly recently they had an immigration law that only allowed white English-speaking Europeans (they used to have some kind of test you had to do in English). That's a vast simplification, but Google "White Australia". It was mainly in response to the flood of Chinese mining immigrants during the gold rush in the late 1800s (shortly after the San Fran gold rush they had one here). It wasn't repealed until the1970s. That's more of a digression as the Hyde Park Barracks were more about the convict history. Usually the convicts would get here and would live out in town working. The barracks were more of a way station, but some people stayed there. Now it's a UNESCO World Heritage site.
It was still a really gorgeous day so we hopped a nearby bus (so easy!) and headed to Bondi Beach. In hindsight, I wish I had grabbed my bathing suit from my bag. There are many walks over there that are supposed to be gorgeous. We did the Bondi to Bronte beach walk. It was Mon, but
there were a TON of people on the Bondi beach, laying out. With the amount of skin cancer here it's nuts to see people laying out (Jim thinks they're mostly tourists, which they likely are). Out of the whole beach, there were only 2 umbrellas. The weather was really perfect -- warm in the sun but with a cool breeze. We didn't go down to the water, but the info boards said it was freezing.
The walk to Bronte beach (the whole coast is a stretch of different beaches) is a gorgeous paved trail along the coast. The views were phenomenal with gorgeous brilliant blue sky, azure water, gentle white foam as the waves broke on the rocks below us. It was straight out of a painting. It seriously looked and felt like paradise. The whole walk was a gentle 1-2 miles to go out to Bronte and back. Since we didn't have suits with us, that was the extent of us enjoying the day. We ended at this cool bar area called Iceberg with a great view near Bondi beach. There's a pool there that has presumably sea water, and is so close to the ocean that when
Park selfie
Really nice day in Hyde Park a big wave comes it splashes across the pool. It's just a lap pool, but was so gorgeous I was REALLY missing not having my suit (though I'm betting it was COLD). We enjoyed a couple drinks there, then caught the bus back to our hotel.
After grabbing our bags we stopped for a quick bite at a local restaurant, and were entertained by 2 very loud sulphur-crested cockatoos (what I called corellas in one of my previous blogs, but were actually cockatoos). On our trip to the airport on the fancy trains (they are really nice -- 2 floors with the seats that flip around), we learned that the 3 stops it takes us to get to the airport would normally be around $3, but there is a $13 surcharge to get off at the airport stop. RIDICULOUS! We also learned that we can go negative on our cards, the only downside being that we'd have to pay for that next time we topped up our cards. Ha! Loophole. So we now each have a card with negative $10 or so.
And that was Sydney in a nutshell! Not a bad little weekend, despite the dreary weather.
Bondi Beach
Very famous beach. Notice the lack of umbrellas. There was actually a cool breeze that day making it very comfortable! We saw everything we wanted to see. It's a much younger town, and I think might make a nice place to live (though if I lived here, Brisbane really is a nice city!), but overall felt like any other young, hip town. At the airport on the way home, it was the same experience as going out - no one checked our IDs once, only looked at our boarding pass when we actually got on the plane, and definitely never weighed our bags (despite publicizing the 7kg weight limit). Virgin Australia blew Jetstar out of the water. Even had free entertainment, snacks, and soda! (I almost finished the Steve Jobs movie-- to be continued on the Cairns flight!). And the adventure continues...
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Aunt Mad
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Hello from across the world!
What a fantastic experience you're having! And you're blogging about it & photographing it so well! Love you!!! Continue to enjoy it!!