Just 20 days ago we arrived in
Sunny Sydney after spending the night sleeping on the uncomfy metal seats at
Melbourne airport!
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| A cosy night in Melbourne airport, awaiting our flight to Sydney! |
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| Kings cross...also know as the red light district of Sydney! |
After the 90
minute flight to Sydney from Melbourne we soon arrived at Kings Cross, an area which is renowned for being unsafe and abit sleazy (although we didn't find this out until we had actually left!) to check
into a cool little hostel called chilli blue backpackers! We originally booked
a 10 bed dorm (as this was the cheapest option for a backpacker on a budget!)
but were pleasantly surprised to see we had been moved to a 4 bed dorm with a
big private balcony, the only balcony at the hostel which was pretty cool and
had a view of the harbour bridge in the far, far distance! We later found out
there wasn’t even a 10 bed dorm at the hostel, but we still got a pretty good
deal anyway! The area of Kings Cross is the most densely populated part of Sydney, which is said to be where the rich people lived together with the poor.
The
Sunday we arrived in Sydney we wandered around (without a lonely planet to
guide us- shock horror!) and discovered the paddy’s market, which was mostly just
souvenirs, clothes and some fruit stalls...though not as cheap or as much
variety as what the Vic market in Melbourne had.
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| Sydney's Paddy's Market! |
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| The hostels Pug's awaiting their city walk... |
On our
second day in Sydney we signed up to a free walking tour of the city, which we
thought would be a couple of hours so we took the dogs with us that belonged to
the hostel (two chubby little pugs...), the first ever dogs to join the city
tour apparently! The tour ended up being nearer 5 hours, but was worth the leg
ache because it was really interesting and so we got to see and learn alot! the
dog’s seemed to appreciate the exercise too and the attention they got from the
tour guide, and slept for a full day or two following their big adventure in
the city!
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| In front of the Harbour bridge at the end of a long tour around the city! |
A visit to
Sydney is not complete without having a stroll over the harbour bridge,
admiring the opera house, taking the famous ferry to Manly beach and visiting
the well know Bondi beach! Luckily in the 4 days we had in Sydney we managed to
squeeze all of this in!
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| Manly wharf |
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| A stroll along Manly beach |
The Sydney
harbour bridge, known to the sydneysiders (locals) as the “coathanger”, which
was opened 80 years ago was really cool to see and walk across...it was huge
and had some fantastic views from the top. There was the choice to do the
Harbour Bridge climb for $100 and upwards, which involved walking and climbing
along the outer arch of the bridge with a guide, but we opted to walk along it
on the footpath as it was slightly less daunting and cheaper too!
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| About to step onto the harbour bridge footpath... |
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| The bridge by night |
Another
famous icon of Sydney is obviously is the opera house! We didn’t go inside, but admired it from the
outside of course! It is rather oddly shaped, but very unique at the same time!
It definitely makes a good picture with the Harbour bridge dazzling away in the
background! We learnt that it was
designed by a Danish architect, Jorn Utzon, and that the roof is made up of 1,056,006
Swedish ceramic tiles!- power to the Scandinavians!
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| View of the opera house from the Harbour bridge |
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| The opera house! |
Finally, on our last day in Sydney before we were to spend yet another night sleeping in the airport (or not sleeping in this case, as the domestic airport didn't open until 5am, so instead we drank lots of coffee and used the free wifi in the nearby McDonalds for several hours!) we decided to squeeze in a day at Bondi beach! Unfortunaely we didn't bump into the Bondie Vet, but the beach was nice, abit smaller than we had expected, but the big waves and the scenic coastal walk around the beach made up for that :-)
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| The well known Bondi beach of Sydney! |
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| Bondi beach- the closest beach to the CBD. |
So this was our last stop in the amazing Australia! (though we did have a couple of hours in Cairnes airport and 5 hours in Darwin on route to Singapore). Good times were had, and even greater memories were made...we will especially miss the Kangaroos (not the sausages!), kookaburras, Cockatoos, HelpX experiences, amazing coffee, barbies, funny words such as "ripper" (cool!), "chuck a U-ey" (perform a U turn), "Doona" (A blanket) and mostly the chirpy Australian people!
