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Published: February 12th 2010
With an early morning departure from Mark & Leanne’s in Melbourne, we arrived in Sydney around 10 on Monday morning. Finding our hostel in the Rocks (an area right in the heart of Sydney underneath the Sydney Bridge) turned out to be a bit more challenging than we thought, but after some tough stair climbing (I'll let you guess who carried all 4 suitcases!?) we found our destination - Sydney Harbour YHA. After checking in (and being reunited with our luggage that had been shipped from Perth!) we started looking out for the other “Canadian” team who would be arriving: Mike & Rita, along with their friends Andre, Areta, Pierro, Tom and Ying. Upon assembling in the afternoon, we decided the best thing to start our time in Sydney would be to grab some drinks and head to the hostel’s roof top courtyard - complete with an amazing view to both the Opera House and to Sydney Bridge. Hello Sydney! Finishing our night with a trip to Chinatown for some food and a walk through Darling Harbour, we were all excited to get on to all that Sydney had to offer!
With some of the Canadians still getting over their jet
lag, we had a lazy morning on Tuesday as we all assembled in the morning with one thought on our mind: beach day! With Sydney’s beaches being some of the most talked about in Australia, we needed to check out what all the hype was about. With Bondi being the easiest to get to, we packed up our gear and headed for the “Wasaga of Sydney.” Arriving and excited to kick off our “thongs,” we saw something that made Sheena run back to the towels: the blue-bottle jellyfish! Luckily we weren’t stung (unlike an unsuspecting busload of Japanese tourists…) and we were finally able to find a section of beach that was free from the stingers and we got in to play in the waves. We finished our day coming back to the city and hitting up the Sydney Aquarium and spending some time in Darling Harbour.
The next day we were up at 5am to catch a 6am train out to the talked-about Blue Mountains, which is about a 2 hour ride from Sydney. We had planned a full day of abseiling, climbing, and canyoning in the Blue Mountains, and we all were extremely excited despite the early wake-up
time. Getting to Katoomba (town 2 hours outside of Sydney) and finding our guide the rain started to fall, and looking at the sky it was obvious that the rains weren’t going to let up all day. Despite the weather, we all were pumped to get to our first spot and learn how to abseil, or rappel. Starting with the little cliffs, we worked our way up to about a 15m drop - but still not as high as our 30m drop we’d experience in the afternoon! After a quick lunch (with the rain continuing to pour) reality started to set in: with the amount of rain we’d had thus far, it might be too dangerous to go down the canyon. We tried to stay optimistic, but after arriving at our site and walking the 20 mins down the canyon, we saw the waterfall - and it looked a little too fierce for us. Our guides confirmed that they’d never seen this much water in the canyon, and after another guide gave us the “thumbs down,” it sealed our fate that our canyoning trip was now a “can-not-yoning” adventure…and we all were pretty disappointed. Check out
Mike & Rita’s blog for a video
of the weather that day. Unfortunately the guides told us that in the 10 years they'd been doing the tour, this was only the second day they'd had to cancel - just our luck!
The next day was a pretty lazy morning, but was an exciting morning for the group as Pierro - Mike & Rita’s friend - arrived, who will be traveling through Asia with them through the next few months. After welcoming him the proper way (with 11am drinks on the rooftop patio!) we were interviewed by a local TV station on why the YHA was a good hostel. Turns out our answers were good enough that we got a free meal that night from the hostel - good deal!
Friday we said our goodbyes to the Canadian group, as they were heading off to Melbourne and back to Perth, while Sheena and I were down to our final 2 days in Australia. First thing was first: taking care of our luggage where we turned to a Mitchell connection, Lisa Feltz, for a roof over our head. Dropping off our bags in the morning at Lisa’s downtown office, Sheena and I went first to the Sydney Opera House
Waves at Bondi
We found some clean water away from the blue-bottles, and were able to have some fun!where we decided to take the tour and see what all the hype was about. Surprisingly, amongst the blue-haired crowd (we were definitely the youngest on the tour!) it was a very interesting building story. With an initial budget of $7M and a 3-year timeline, we were surprised to hear that it took 16 years and cost $160M! Some expensive building for a town that prior had no desire to go to the opera…
After the Opera House we hopped on a ferry out to Manley Beach - Sydney’s other famous stretch of sand. Unfortunately, the weather was looking greyer and greyer, and by the time we reached the beach it started to pour! We grabbed a quick bite by the beach and watched some of the brave surfers, grabbed some ice cream and reluctantly headed back to the city, knowing that this would be our last patch of Australian sand…goodbye beaches!
Meeting back up with Lisa and her roommate Jen we settled into their guest bedroom (complete with cookies on our pillows, another phenomenal host!) we headed out to the famous Coogee Beach Hotel (I think) for some drinks and dinner. Lets just say that it was an eventful
evening!
Saturday brought our second straight day of rain, and it was a downpour. After a lazy morning, Lisa and Jen accompanied us to some of the Sydney Markets (the Paddington and the Paddy Markets) to pick up some final souvenirs, before we settled in to some homemade sangria and a BBQ dinner (between breaks in the rain!) to seal our last night in Australia. I, of course, had a kangaroo steak - medium rare - as I won’t be having one of those for a long time!
Waking up on Sunday AM and preparing for our flight at 3pm, we had one final task in Australia - to meet Sheena’s cousin Candace at the airport as she was landing that morning to head to the University of Sydney to start a Master’s degree in Physiotherapy. Lisa, always the fantastic host, offered to drive us to pick up Candice and her intimate knowledge of the Sydney airport ensured that we found Candace with no problems and got her to her temporary residence quick and easy. We dropped Candace off, went back to grab our luggage and headed to Sydney Airport to fly back to Canada, looking forward to our next
Famous!
Rita being interviewed! adventure with Lindsey and Chris in Whistler - skiing, snow, and the Olympics!
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