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Published: November 16th 2010
Firstly this blog is a little late and we are behind with our blogs in Aus as the internet is so bad! But they will be going up over the next few days hopefully...this is from our time in Sydney from the 4th-6th Nov...
We had a short flight from Melbourne and arrived in Sydney on a grey rainy morning, but the sights of the famous Opera House and Harbour Bridge in the distance soon lifted our spirits. We were staying in the Harbour Rocks area which overlooks the opera house and the bridge and is surrounding by lots of markets, shops, bars and cafes on little cobbled streets- much nicer than central Sydney which is a bit like Soho, with neon lights and cheap bars. Our hostel was brand new so everything was immaculate and we were in a shared room with an older couple from Italy which was fine, as a private room in Sydney in a hostel costs the same as in a good hotel in London, madness!
We decided to walk towards the Opera House which was only 10 minutes away and very impressive, although it wasn’t the same in the rain it
was still awesome to see it for real after seeing it on tv for so long at home. We could also see the Harbour Bridge which was huge. We then walked towards a big open food court type place which, like NZ, had a great selection of fast, healthy food including Italian, all types of Asian, Salad bars and more- we wish they had places like this at home! We had some lunch (chicken salad for Scott, noodles for Vic) before strolling back to the hostel, but not before stopping at a Japanese display to celebrate something (we weren’t quite sure what), and trying on the Samurai outfits! After that we went back to the hostel and relaxed in the large tv room (as it was raining) whilst deciding what to do on our first night in Sydney.
The hostel were holding a rooftop Aussie bbq night so we thought we would do that as it was cheap and it would be nice to spend the evening on the rooftop overlooking the opera house and bridge, but because of the rain it was moved to the kitchen area downstairs. We still decided to have that for our dinner then
go out and hit some bars in Sydney, so we had hot dogs with salad as well as Kangaroo kebabs! Yes even Vic tried them, Neither of us were overly keen on the meat, its a bit like steak only tougher, but we had to try the local cuisine and now we don’t need to have it again. We then headed out to some bars in the city and onto a club in Darling Harbour which was fun, before heading home (in the rain) via another bar which wouldn’t have looked out of place in London or Marbella (with drink prices to boot!) before finally getting back to the hostel past 3am, trying to be as quiet as we could in our shared room so as not to wake the Italian couple. We just about did this and got to sleep before Scott’s alarm went off at 6am, as it was set for the morning when we had to fly to Sydney from Melbourne, so that definitely woken them up!
We woke up to more rain the next day so decided to go to the Sydney Aquarium as it was inside. We had some breakfast at the hostel and
got a bus towards Darling Harbour where the aquarium was located, about 15 minutes away from where we were staying. Darling Harbour was really lovely with great views accross the city and restaurants, bars and shops set around a big harbour with a few small boats as well as huge cruise liners. The aquarium was great and we spent a good couple of hours in there looking at all the marine life including some enourmous turtles, several types of shark (including the harmless nurse shark and the lethal great white) and lots of different tropical fish. There was lots of information on the various animals and the encolures were brilliant where you could walk below the water, through tunnels, and see these amazing creatures swimming above.
We then headed next door to the Sydney wildlife centre and figured that as no one had bothered to check our tickets for the aquarium (which we paid quite a bit for) there may be a small chance it was the same set-up accross at the wildlife centre, luckily for us it was and we managed to get in free of charge. There was the largest captive crocodile in Australia called 'Rex' which
was 6 meters long and we listened to the various tales of how it was captured in a small village in New Guiena. He had been captured as he was eating people and dogs who were camping near where it lived in the North of Aus, but it was having a nice life in the aquarium and would have probably been killed if it stayed in the wild. We then walked through the creepy crawly area, which Vic's absolutely hated before moving onto the cuddley koalas and red kangaroos, before exsiting and heading back to our hostel for a home cooked chicken schnizel (breaded chicken) with spaghetti nalopoletena and getting ready for our 2nd and last night out in Sydney.
Around the hostel were lots of trendy looking bars so we thought we would have a drink in one of them as a treat...well $32 later (about £23!) we had ourselves a cocktail and a beer, what a rip off! As we clearly couldn't afford to have any more drinks there we headed to the cheaper backpacker bars which were a lot of fun and we danced the night away until gone 2am before bussing it back (in the
rain) to our hostel and once again going through the palava of trying to be super quiet so as not to wake our room mates...which at 2 in the morning after a good few drinks is not easy and we failed miserably as Scott struggled to get into the top bunk without a light on and Vic was searching and rustling for her face wipes which were at the bottom of her bag for ages (in the dark). Luckily they were really good about it in the morning so we didn't feel too bad!
In the morning we checked out of the hostel as we were leaving that night, and as it was quite sunny we decided to check out Bondi Beach, Sydney's most famoius beach about 40 minutes outside of the city. We jumped on a bus and although it wasn't hot enough to sunbathe or swim it was a better day than the previous 2 so we were looking forward to seeing the beach and having some time to relax there. Unfortuantely just before we got off the bus the heavens opened and the rain lashed down...I know, we didn't think it rained like this in Sydney
either, especially not at the start of summer anyway! So we got off the bus in our thin clothes with no umbrella and ran to the nearest shop for some shelter, hoping the rain would stop soon. It let off slightly after about 25 minutes but by this time our spirits were dampened (literally) so we crossed the road, looked at Bondi beach (which actually didn't look as amazing as we thought, but this might have been because of the grey skies and rain) took a photo and got the bus back to central Sydney! At least we can say we have been to Bondi (sort of). We jumped off the bus and went back to the hostel where we had something to eat quickly before getting our stuff and going to the bus station where we would be getting our first night bus in Aus. We got stuck in traffic on the way there though so when we got off we had to run to the bus station with all our bags and we narrowly made the bus to Byron Bay, a 12 hour overnight journey, where hopefully we would encounter our first taste of the much talked about
Australian sunshine and the beach!
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Charlotte
non-member comment
Sorry I missed u
Ahh looks like u've done way more than us living here. Sorry we missed u and sorry the weather was bad- it's sooo hot now! Also just as expensive as u say. Rubbish. Xxx