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Published: November 10th 2012
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The girls at the Opera House!
Bird, Melissa, Alexa, me, Leah I’ve been meaning to blog this past week but there’s been so much going on that I haven’t had time!! I’m with my best friends Alexa, Melissa, Colleen (but everyone calls her Bird) and Leah on the 10-day break in between the Australia and New Zealand portions of this semester. This, without a doubt, has been and forever will be the best 10 days of my life.
We left early in the morning on the first day (11/2/12) for SYDNEY!! When we got there I was really surprised because I had no idea how different it would be from Brisbane. Brisbane is a big city but has a small-town feel. It’s very clean, organized and full of locals. Sydney, on the other hand, reminded me of New York City. It was loud, busy, and packed with people that were mostly tourists. I don’t think that Sydney could feel like home the way that Brisbane did but it was definitely a must-visit.
We first walked around for a little bit in the division where our hostel was until we could figure out the bus system. Translink in Brisbane has prepaid cards that deduct money from a balance whenever and wherever
you want to ride, but in Sydney you have to buy individual tickets for each bus in advance. The drivers also aren’t as friendly or helpful as they were in Brisbane. One time in the beginning of the semester Alexa and I got on the wrong bus and asked the driver how to get home. He whipped out a map to find our house, did a 180-turn-around from his route, and drove us RIGHT to our street!!! It was so crazy but that story doesn’t even a surprise us anymore because people are SO nice in Brisbane. Ahh, I miss it already.
Anyway, back to Sydney. This break was absolutely perfect and we were so lucky with the way that everything worked out. We booked our hostels with little background knowledge and didn’t formally organize any activities but I don’t think it would’ve played out better if we planned it.
There was a free bus that looped through all the major parts of Sydney and stopped right by our hostel (lucky, right?). We took that to Sydney Harbor and walked around all day. There were cute vendors everywhere that only set up on Fridays (lucky, again). The Opera
House was sooo cool to see in person. From pictures I’ve been like “Oh yeah, that’s a funky building, I guess” but in person it’s like “Wow!! That’s the craziest/coolest thing I’ve ever seen!!!” We climbed the Harbor Bridge to get an even better view and there were even more breathtaking sights of the city up there.
The Opera House is even cooler up close. The architecture is so weird and I’ve never seen anything like it. I really wanted to see what a theater looks like but there were shows playing so I couldn’t get past the lobby.
Outside the Opera House and right on the water is the Opera Bar. It was bustling with fabulous people that went out for fabulous drinks after their fabulous workweek ended. We bought cocktails and watched the gorgeous sunset over the skyline. It was like we were the girls from Sex and the City and I was loving it.
That night we went out to King’s Cross to explore the night life. We thought it’d be a good place to try because that’s where the cast of MTV’s Real World Sydney lived. The train station was about a 30-second
walk from our hostel (lucky) but we didn’t understand the ticket system and ended up getting a ride for free (double lucky). There were a couple strips of bars/clubs to try but it was impossible to bar hop like we usually do because every place had like a $20 cover charge. We ran into some sort of Halloween special that was offering entry into two adjacent clubs for only $10 total and took our chances with that. Luckily, they turned out to be sooo fun that we didn’t even want to try anywhere else. We always take a few pictures when we go out but as soon as we took out cameras we were flocked with people! For whatever reason they loved being in pictures so we were snapping pics with random people alllll night, it was seriously too funny.
We had such a blast that first night and all agreed that it was the perfect way to kick-off the start to our break! We thought that this night was going to be our ‘fun night out’ in Sydney but we had no idea what was in store for us on Saturday…
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