Advertisement
Published: July 12th 2010
P1120406
Just cant get away from bloody Dr Who!!Sophisticated nights, hanging with the Rosoman’s and the best view in town
Well the journey to Sydney took very little time at all in comparison with the trip from Melbourne to Canberra and we’d only just finished our Devonshire cream tea (getting to be quite a habit on these train journeys) before we had pulled up at Sydney central. It looked very much like Victoria or any other big train station and was full of people rushing around. I knew our hostel was near by as it was an old railway platform with carriages on it turned into dorm rooms. I figured with Nath’s love of trains (and my love of train journeys) that it would be an interesting place to stay. We’d booked it through our new “e-nights” scheme (you buy 15 nights accommodation at a discount upfront and then use them when you like at almost any YHA) as the hostels in Sydney were ridiculously expensive so all in all we figured we’d got quite a good deal.
On exiting the station it turned out the hostel was just round the corner but still far enough away that dragging our bags was a pain. We got
our room keys quickly as the hostel was super modern but super empty and headed to our room….it really was an old train carriage, bloody excellent! The only thing was that the windows weren’t really blacked out much and we realised that whilst the track we were on was now closed for business the one over the way was still in use, It was in fact the line we had just come in on- oh dear I hope the trains stop during the night! Never mind, we decided to get ourselves acquainted with the area and headed out for some cheap food. Unfortunately the only way to eat cheaply in Sydney is to eat at MacDonald’s, so that’s what we did, after looking at a number of over priced (because it had the word Sydney in it) restaurants/cafes. This of course also meant that we replenished our sugar stock with “Mc sachets” as we both “fell over” in the stock piles near the bins - whoops silly us, really must learn to walk properly
Now Nath, for the last few days had started to look a bit side show bob-ish with his bouffant hair do, so after dinner we
P1120408
Our cool but noisey accommodation were both glad to find a 10 dollar barbers, where for once, he didn’t come out looking like a holocaust victim or egg shaped!! Finally a cheap hair cut by someone that doesn’t have their eyes working independently of each other! With it now dark and having no idea where in Sydney we actually were we decided to chilax at the hostel that night and maybe make some plans for the next few days. I looked into seeing something at the Sydney opera house and uncannily the next night was the last night the Sydney philharmonic orchestra would be playing, so we spent a while trying to find seats we could actually afford. We also spent some time in the tiny TV room on some weird bean bags type things and watched an episode of neighbours that had stuff going on in it that made no sense to me as I realised the last time I watched it, mrs mangle lived on the street still. The young girl sat next to us had no idea what we were going on about and soon after left the room coz I think our age made her feel uncomfortable!!
That night it
was indeed not quite as cool as I thought it was gonna be as the light streamed through the poorly made cover on the windows…..we also discovered that trains do not stop just because we have gone to bed -god dam it!!! So a little bleary eyed we woke the next morning and packed up our stuff as we were luckily due to leave for the newest YHA on the block a place called “the rocks” near Sydney harbour in an area called the rocks. We had heard before from sally and Toby that they would be staying there but when I had looked at the price it was even worse than being at the noisy station place, but again we had found the loop hole, namely our e-nights and figured hey we would stay there too and enjoy the plush new rooms with a view of the opera house (or so we had read). The only problem with coming to this hostel was that the rocks region was down by the harbour and in the oldest surviving part of town up tiny little steep streets, which are great to walk round on a lazy day but a nightmare dragging
20kg bags in the heat of the day. By the time we made it to the top, I couldn’t give a crap about how full of history the area was, I just wanted them to knock it all down and put an elevator in!! Anyway the YHA was constructed on top of an archaeological site they found when the 80’s car park, that was there before’ was dug up. So the building itself is elevated above the ground so that you could still go round the site and see what they had unearthed. Of course being elevated meant more bloody stairs, as it 4 flights to get here weren’t enough! But on seeing the hostel inside it was worth the journey; all the rooms were ensiute and immaculate, it was like a hotel room. The kitchen was pretty clean with an amazing free food cupboard that kept us in lunches for the next few days!! And a view at the top to die for. With all the hotels and sky rise apartments around the harbour area charging a fortune for a view of the bridge and the opera house, we had it all for a 14 of the price -
P1120417
Our first view of a grey Sydney sweet as!! Only problem was the great view of the harbour was currently obscured by a massive cruise ship that was anchored there.
The only thing that let the whole place down was the weather, as we are quickly discovering, even Australia has cloudy days (of which we seem to get a large proportion of them following us) so on seeing the famous sights it was a little anticlimax as the weather just didn’t light up the area like I imagined. The opera house was smaller than expected but then I had been told this, so I wasn’t so disappointed by that (not like when I saw big Ben for the first time, you see it on the 10 o’clock news and it looks huge and then you get to London and it might as well be a model village, anyway….). With our tickets purchased for the opera house that evening we decided to go for a walk over the bridge and up one of the towers to have a view over the river as I had read in my guide book. Unfortunately I keep forgetting my guide book is now 7 years old and thus the free view
now costs you 20 dollars! Never mind, the walk over the Sydney Bridge was great and reminded us a lot of San Francisco, except it was a bit warmer.
We walked the full length of it to the other side and took a load of shots of the harbour bridge and opera house but without the sun it just didn’t do it justice, so we continued on our walk hoping that the next day we might have more luck. We walked along the water front and past “Luna Park”, which we had missed whilst staying in Melbourne, so stopped for a while to have a look around. It was indeed an old style theme park with lots of cut outs where you put your face through, crazy mirrors and helter skeltas. We stopped to look at one of the rides, which was a spinning room where the floor disappeared and you stick to the wall. It made us feel sick looking at it whiz round, there was no way I was gonna have a go on that. Everything else at the park was expensive and covered in children and vomit, so we decided to move on. After walking back
over the bridge we headed down to the opera house to get a closer look, it was immense and beautiful close up, kind of surreal being there and was one of those moments when we say to ourselves “wow we’re actually in Australia”. With another 100 shots of the opera house on the camera we headed back to the hostel and suddenly realised how tired we were, I guess we had walked a long way.
That night, to save money, as again all the places to eat were super expensive, we ate the left overs from the “free food” fridge, which consisted of sandwiches and some chocolate. It was enough to stop us walking past all the restaurants on the way to the opera house, and falling for the inviting smells. We’d tried to “dress up” as much as possible for the opera, as we figured we should make the effort for such a place. Unfortunately we only had a few bits of clothing that weren’t already stinking or covered in creases, so we headed off wearing the best of a bad bunch and hoped the lighting in the opera house would be flattering for us. It was so
exciting being there, but it was still small inside, and I was beginning to wonder where we would possibly be sitting in such a small space, but the place turned out to be a type of tardis, as the huge auditorium appeared at the top of the stairs. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take photos once inside (so we only took a couple of shots, hehehe) so we sat an enjoyed the ambience of the place filling up. We were sat next to some rather large Americans, who turned out had come in on the huge cruise ship. They were from Texas and found the whole sitting and listening to classical music a little dull and yawned all the way through it. The guy started chatting to me as we waited and told me that they were the youngest people on the cruise ship at age 65 and felt like they were surrounded by oldies! They had been on the ship for a month as it had sailed from Florida over the Pacific Ocean and circumnavigated the whole of Australia, and he happened to comment on the amount of money we must have had to do our trip!!!!
Anyway
at the interval, Nath and I legged it out ASAP to the bar as you litterly had 10 minutes, so with a glass of expensive bubbly in hand we tried to join the crowd of sophisticated people (and the Texans) but without much luck, our clothes were still looking like we had slept in them, oh well the pitfalls of living out of a suitcase I guess. After downing our drink we headed back in for the second half. Now I like classical music, when I recognise it but other than that it’s all a bit meaningless to me. So although I enjoyed the evening, I got more joy out of watching the poor old woman sat all on her own behind the orchestra in the cheap seats. Surely she would have tough when no one else joined her to sit on the edge, but no she sat slap bang in the middle of the section on her own for the whole show. That’s guts, poor eye sight or one smelly woman!! After the show we walked the edge of the opera house and took even more photos this time in the dark, and this is only one day in,
P1120429
The famous bridge built by our engineering hehehehehe god knows how many we’d have by the end of it. After arriving back at our hostel room with only one other person in it, we settled in for the night on our brand new beds.
After a lovely lay in, we decided to do what we always do in a big city and get on the hop on hop off tour bus. It was a bit sunnier that day but once at the top of the bus it made no difference. We did half the loop of the city, as what with roads works preparing the area for Anzac day, we were running out of time to get to join the second bus to Bondi. We had to get off one bus and wait for another for the Bondi connection and although neither of us were that bothered, we decided we should still go, I mean after all there could be a lot of totty to gawk at (well Nath hoped anyway). Now I’d heard form many people that Bondi really isn’t that impressive unless you’re an absolute beach bum/surfer type; and the first thing I thought of when I saw it was (no not centre parks) “wow
P1120431
A spooky looking door - wonder where it goes it looks like a sunny version of Margate”. We went for a walk and I think Nath was a little disappointed that it wasn’t the boob fest he had imagined. There were a few attractive people, posing and using the beach like a cat walk, most of them playing for the wrong team for Nath and I!! We walked some of it before getting too hot and deciding we would need an ice-cream before we could possibly go any further.
We left the beach and headed back towards Sydney on the bus, this time in bright sunshine and finally feeling like we were in oz again. We were due to be meeting Sally, Toby and the boys back at the hostel so didn’t want to hang about on the beach doing nothing for too long. As we arrived back at the hostel, we were met by Sally, Toby and the boys who were a little shy at first as they were all so young and didn’t know me and probably didn’t really remember Nath much. But this didn’t last long and before we even got to the harbour we were all holding hands and playing chase along the board
walk. Nath enjoyed the fact that I was helping push the buggy but not as much as he was enjoying sharing his perving with Toby! It took us a while to find somewhere to eat that we could afford. After walking the entire harbour we came back to the first place we had looked at as this was the cheapest by a few cents, but with this many of us to eat we needed to save as much as possible.
It was a funny evening with the boys finding everything interesting and making faces in the glass doors and blowing bubbles in their drinks; the 4 kids were also having fun with the colouring books they had been given! The evening was a great laugh but we realised just how tiring having kids, especially 4 of them was. I don’t know how people come on holiday with kids, the time you need to spend with them to keep them happy, I mean I’m far too selfish, I can’t imagine how bored my parents must have been whilst Donna and I enjoyed the butlins type entertainment on holiday - I guess that’s why they invented alcohol!! With the kids getting
tired we headed back to the hostel but it was far too early to head to bed so we went up to the top floor and enjoyed watching a film about fake gay marriage -cant remember what it was called.
Next morning, we were a little late getting up, being as we didn’t have 4 kids waking us in the early hours. We needed to finish the other half of our bus tour of Sydney, to make the extortionate price worth it, so jumped on one of the earliest buses in the hope of not being too long, as we had all decided o go to the beach in the afternoon. Seeing the rest of Sydney was ok. its not the nicest looking city, but does have a few old buildings in it and is pretty large so there is still enough to keep you interested. However the bus trip that should have taken an hour ended up taking double the amount of time as the bus driver we had seemed to have left his brain in the jar beside his bed that morning and ambled along like a Sunday morning driver (although it was actually Sunday so maybe
that was it?). we finally got back to the harbour and boarded the manly ferry (for only 2 dollars-bargain!), which should really be relabelled the cattle ship as bar being branded on the arse on the way in, we were pretty much put in pens and sailed across the water.
After navigating all the kids towards the beach we managed to find a spot on the very busy beach. It was much nicer and much busier than Bondi (I really don’t see the fuss about it) so we only had a small spot to squeeze into but as Nath and the boys headed off to the water, the three of us “adults” enjoy some space and peace and quiet. As lovely as it was laying there all I could do was keep looking at the clock and counting down the hours till my favourite show - yes Dr Who. The brand new series had already started in the UK and friends had said the new guy was good but I wanted to see it for myself. Luckily in conversation the night before it turns out the boys love the show too and really wanted to watch it which gave
me a great excuse to “have to have it on in the hostel” because the kids wanted it on!! I spent most of the time on the beach watching Nath’s white torso (8 months and still only a farmers tan on the arms) being splashed by the kids, he was loving every minute of it I could tell. Soon it was time to head back as the temperature dropped quite quickly, must have only been 24 degrees now (hehehehehe). On the way back we all had an ice cream as we got back on the ferry. I have never seen so much ice cream around one face but then I have never been a tidy eater!
So anyway dinner was a big rush for me as I wanted desperately to get to the TV room before anyone else to control what was on. Unfortunately there was already a guy there watching stupid sport but eventually after talking loudly and singing a lot he left for some reason and we finally had the screen to ourselves with 10 mins to spare. Now it was my turn to be excited.
Now I’m just gonna write a small bit about my
opinion on Dr Who so if you’re not interested then scroll to the next paragraph….so immediately I didn’t like the new music and being a BIG David Tennant fan, this guy was gonna have to be amazing for me to like him. So all in all, the episode was good, had some funny bits and he is actually a good doctor. I cannot however get past the age thing as he looks, and is, so much younger than his predecessor that I just can’t get past it. I think over all that’s what ruined it for me, but I’ll keep going of course, give him time to settle into the role.
So with the excitement of Dr Who over, Nath and I again sat up watching random TV as it was still too early to go to bed, but we said good night to the Rosomans. So far since arriving at the nicest hostel in the world, we had only had one tiny Chinese person in our room on the first night and then for the rest of the week we were on our own, so it was like having a hotel room to ourselves. We spent some time
P1120452
Like looking in a mirror sorting through our clothes, as Sally said she would take them back with her and pass them onto Nath’s mate, Trev (her brother) to save us some room. Now I must just add, this is the biggest mystery to us, the bag volume mystery….we left the UK with 20kg in our bags, we have sent a large parcel back from NZ and now another one from OZ, we haven’t bought any more clothes etc whilst away but some how we have just as little room as we did when we left?? What??? Can anyone explain it to me?? All I can think of is that my clothes are mating……..suggestions please.
Next morning it was time to say good bye to the Rosomans, which was sad, it was like having a little piece of home around for a while. The boys came running over, just missing Nath’s nuts, and gave us both a big hug goodbye. I felt really bad giving them yet another bag to take with them on the plane, what with all the kids stuff they had but Nath helped them load the car so at least we weren’t just waving them off and watching them struggle.
P1120456
I feel sick.......... Now at the time of writing this the volcano in Iceland had erupted and covered most of Europe in ash so all the flights out of the UK were grounded. Lots of people were still hanging at the hostel because their flights had been cancelled without any idea of when they might get home. People we’re on the news complaining about it, but I figured that it wasn’t the biggest deal really to be stuck on holiday - but then it hadn’t happened to me I guess and I’m normally the first to moan about things. So Sally and Toby were also in this predicament, they were due to fly out in a few days but weren’t holding their breath.
On our own once again and needing to check out of the lovely hostel, we headed back on the free bus to the north of the city, where we had come in originally, so we could be by the train station again for our trip to the Blue Mountains. Dragging the bags down the cobbled steps again was a huge pain and not helped by people taking their time on the steps looking at the history of the area
when the blood was draining from my fingers and the sweat was dripping from face whilst I waited. It didn’t annoy me that they were taking their time, only that with the blood in my fingers I was unable to punch any of them in the guts in protest!!
We arrived at the YHA central, which was a huge old building with hundreds of beds in it, and again we managed to have our own room again, but it still wasn’t far enough away from the station to not hear the train arriving - never mind it was only for one night. The rest of the day was spent chilling out and I finally got to send some post cards I had been meaning to post since New Zealand!!! That night not wanting to have to buy a load of food for just one meal, as we would be leaving for the Blue mountains in the morning we decided to treat our selves and have a meal in the restaurant next door. Nath tried kangaroo again but rather than having it in a pie like in Melbourne he had a huge medium rare steak which he said was lovely
P1120458
I always thought Nath's arms were abnormally long! but I just couldn’t bring my self to try it, especially when he started making jokes about Skippy!! With two full bellies it was off to bed as we had an early train to catch the next morning…….
Advertisement
Tot: 0.229s; Tpl: 0.042s; cc: 8; qc: 25; dbt: 0.0985s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb
Donna
non-member comment
LOL
Love, love, love the caption! Made me laugh.