Advertisement
Published: October 16th 2007
Danae snacks at the Newcastle bus terminal
Look at all our stuff! And all those bags of freee foood...score!On Tuesday morning, Danae and I headed back into Newcastle to catch the Greyhound bus down to Sydney. I had told Danae of my plans to travel after Nationals, and she decided she would come along with me. So, for three weeks, I had the company of a rather wacky Australian who often turned out to be a much tackier tourist than myself. It was good times...
The ride was 2 and a half hours through the pretty New South Wales landscape. We had loads of food with us, since everyone had given us their leftover food from Nationals, so we snacked along the way. Mostly we napped and read the complimentary magazine. The funny thing about the Greyhound in Australia is that Australians don't ride it. It's filled with tourists, and only tourists. So as the bus pulled into Sydney we got some nice commentary as we passed over the famous Harbour Bridge (oooooh ) and next to the Opera House (aaaaaah). We had arrived in THE Australian landmark city - SYDNEY!!
Wandering Around Our hostel, the fabulous Sydney Central YHA, was only a block from the bus station so we hauled all our stuff
down the street to check in. We unloaded our stuff in our nice double-room and went to check out the kitchen. The great thing about staying in hostels is that they usually have full kitchens, so you can save heaps of money by making your own food. And when all the food you need for a week is given to you, well, you're set for life. (or for a week, as the case may be)
We decided to wander aimlessly around Sydney to aquaint ourselves with the neighbourhood. The first way we walked was rather uneventful so we circled around and eventually ended up at a shopping centre called Market City. After browsing through there, we headed to what would become our "favourite" spot - Darling Harbour. Darling Harbour is one of the many inlets of Sydney harbour and has a great assortment of shopping, eating, and entertainment facilities. It was also only about 10 minutes from our hostel, so we would find ourselves going there quite often.
For our first "night out" in Sydney, we did what any pair of 21-year-olds would do - we saw Harry Potter in IMAX 3D!! The one thing they don't tell
you is that only the last 20 minutes are actually in 3D, so you spend about 90 minutes waiting anxiously for the little symbol to pop up to tell you to put on your glasses. But when it does - oh man, totally worth the wait!!
The Sydney Aquarium Wednesday we found ourselves back at Darling Harbour, this time in the daylight. It's quite a pretty place, both by night and day. We decided to go to the Sydney Aquarium to have a look at the fishies. It was a pretty great aquarium, and we spent hours going through. When we emerged, Darling Harbour was once again dark and we decided to wander home. We found ourselves at the Gallery Victoria, a swanky shopping centre with a huge tribute to the Queen herself.
MONORAIL!! Ok this is probably the most ridiculous day of our whole stay in Sydney. For some reason, we decided to ride the monorail. Five times. We had this genius plan - one time to look at the left, one time to take pictures to the left, one time to look at the right, one time to take pictures to the right, and one time
Sydney Central Station
Think of Union Station in Toronto...or Yonge and Bloor... to enjoy ourselves. Seriously, this was the plan. And the sad thing is we actually accomplished it. The Sydney monorail is quite a useless contraption, clearly designed to lure tacky tourists such as ourselves since the area it covers is all walkable within the half hour. And it doesn't even go by the most famous landmarks of the city (Opera House and Harbour Bridge) but rather circles the downtown and - you guessed it - DARLING HARBOUR. I told you we spent too much time in that place.
The only major accomplishment of that day is that we went back to the Gallery Victoria while the shops were open and I picked up a copy of The Chaser's War on Everything - by far the GREATEST Australian TV show (they're the guys who snuck into APEC pretending to be Canadian and made it all the way to Bush's hotel with a fake Bin Laden. Ya, they're THAT cool.) - from the ABC shop. I COULD have bought the DVDs in Perth, but something feels more authentic about buying them from the city where the show is filmed.
Scubar Alright so our hostel had this pub attached to it
called 'Scubar' and you can't take two steps in the hostel without some ad telling you how awesome it is. In fact, while we enjoyed our dinner on Thursday night, people came by with free drink cards to get us to come to their 'pj night'. After deciding that we weren't going to get dressed up, we headed down to Scubar. It was pretty bad. We claimed our free drinks then secluded ourselves to a corner where we were soon invaded by a group of random guys. And, well, I won't get into the details but the night ended with us both leaving that place in a haste and returning to our room where we took pictures of our disgusted faces. Maybe I'll tell you what happened some day when you're older...
This is where Sydney Part 1 ends, but certainly not the end of my Sydney tales! Next stop - the nation's capital, CANBERRA!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.083s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 11; qc: 26; dbt: 0.0304s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
