A Bird's Eye View of Sydney

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It's been a while since I wrote a travel blog, mostly because I've done no travelling. I've rather thrown myself into working life in Sydney and not ventured outside the suburban sprawl since landing some five months ago! That's not to say I haven't found time for the odd day out sightseeing in this fabulous city.

The end of January saw the brief visit of some of Jeff's friends from the UK and this was the perfect opportunity for 'Trip Leader Jeff' to make a comeback, organising a one day spectacular Sydney tour. In the preceding weeks we had been bombarded by him with emails with hour-by-hour itineraries, weather reports, money off vouchers and strict dress code instructions so we had great expectations for the day!

First obstacle was dragging a grumpy, overworked-underslept me out of bed before midday for a leisurely breakfast in The Rocks. Luckily everyone else was hungover from a wedding the previous night so I wasn't the most bleary eyed person there. Fuelled with raisin toast and fry ups we browsed the craft market that lines the streets around The Rocks on the weekends. Somehow I once again resisted the overpriced souveniers and Australiana on display and saved my cash for drinks and nibbles on the rooftop bar of the Glenmore Hotel, a pub in the rocks with a rooftop view of the Opera House. Now rather over-fuelled we made our way down to Circular Quay and boarded a jet boat for a cruise around the harbour.

It was a rather sedate jet boat ride, a lucky thing not only because we had several glasses of wine and a couple of bowls of calamari in us, but it also gave us a chance to see some of the waterfront sights. The driver of our boat had the most Hollywood smarmy voice you can imagine as he pointed out Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman's luxury Sydney pads and described the spot where a Navy diver was mauled by a shark. His favourite spot on the harbour would appear to be the nudey beach out by The Heads, we swung past there twice, honking the horn at the bronzed buttocks on display!

After our trip on the water we treated ourselves to an ice cream and strolled around Circular Quay and Cambell's Cove laughing at the street artists that somehow extort money from the tourists milling around the area every day. Then it was back to my house to queue up for the bathroom so we could all get changed and glam up for the evening schedule. We walked up through the CBD to Sydney Tower, the tallest building in Sydney, needling it's way 300 and something metres above the city skyline. Similar to Toronto's CN Tower and other tall buildings around the world, Sydney Tower has an observation deck and revolving restaurant offering 360 degree views of the city. In true backpacker penny pinching style we had organised our day to go up the tower just before sunset so that we could look down on Sydney in the sun and moon light for one entry fee!

I love getting a birds eye view of places - must be a trait inherited from my map-loving father – and it was even better now that I've lived in Sydney for a few months and could identify lots of landmarks. What struck me most from that height was just how surrounded by water Sydney is. From every angle of our 360 degree view there were large glistening bodies of water, dazzling in the low slung sunlight: the harbour to the North of the tower, stretching out West and narrowing into the Parramatta River, the Pacific Ocean hogging the eastern horizon, and Botany Bay cutting into the southern portion of our vista. Before you ever even visit Sydney you know that the ocean and harbour are the beating heart in Sydneysiders lives, I certainly take looking out at the harbour on my commute everyday totally for granted now, but seeing it all spread out around you like that really makes you appreciate what a spectacularly wonderful setting Sydney is built on.

As the skyscraper shadows cut across the parks and clawed towards Kings Cross and Bondi, Jeff and Steve donned dashing blue jumpsuits and stepped out onto the edge of the tower for an adrenelin hit. Us girls stayed inside the glass walled observation deck - Lyn as far back from the windows as possible - and watched the sun sink beneath the horizon, wondering how long we'd have to wait for the boys before we could go get ourselves a much craved glass of wine! Wine was actually beaten by the lure of cocktails. With much battling and grovelling and changing of comfortable flip flops into 'proper' footwear, we eventually made it to the 360 bar in the tower, past the incredibly surly concierge and into seats looking out over the revolving cityscape, lit up like a phosphorescent reef all around us. Thankfully the bartender was probably a fellow backpacker, or at least polite and un-snobbish enough to serve us delicious overpriced cocktails with a smile so we stayed for a few hours sipping slowly until they told us the bar was closed!


The tower was obviously not enough vertigo inducing sightseeing for me in one week because a few days later I climbed the Harbour Bridge Pylon to get another overview of Sydney. Most people will tell you that climbing the Harbour Bridge is a must do when you come to Sydney, especially if they work for the tourist board. What they probably won't tell you is that it costs between two and three hundred dollars for the pleasure of climbing the coathanger in a natty jumpsuit. What they most certainly won't let slip - because it seems hardly anyone knows about it - is that you can instead climb the pylon (the castle-y bit at the south-eastern end of the bridge), for just $9.50. And they'll let you wear whatever you like too! Yeah you don't go quite as high, but you get a pretty darn good view from up there, including an excellent close up of petrified people clinging for dear life to railings and ladder rungs on the steel curve of the bridge a few metres away.
I personally think the view from the bridge pylon was as good or better than that from Sydney Tower. You get a zoomed in, uninterrupted view of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House, the iconic landmarks of Sydney, that are only glimpsed between the clutter of intermediate skyscrapers from the Tower. You also have the breeze coming straight off the harbour to cool through your hair rather than fake air conditioning.

So that's the exciting stuff that's been going on recently. Mostly life is a blur of working, eating chocolate, and sleeping - normal everyday life basically. I am compiling quite a list of the bizarre and stupid things customers say and do though so if I find the energy for a good rant I'll put them together in a hopefully amusing blog one of these days.

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