First (and definitely not last) Visit to Sydney!!

On the morning of Thursday April 24^th I flew to Sydney from Adelaide. I met my friend Lee at Central Station and we went to a nice place for lunch nearby. Lee is another friend who I had met while on exchange in Scotland. We had been very close since we had travelled to Germany, Hungary and Poland together during our year abroad. We also hadn’t seen each other in over 2 years so I was so excited to see her and that first lunch was full of chitter chatter, catching each other up on our lives. She had to work that day from noon until 5, so after lunch she left me and I walked down to the harbour. Seeing the Sydney Harbour for the first time is pretty indescribable. I have seen pictures of the iconic Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge so many times, so to actually see it all in person is really incredible. I arrived at Circular Quay, which is the area where all of the ferries depart from. It is a bustling area, with both tourists and locals, getting to and from work and seeing the sights. There was an indigenous man sitting there playing the didgeridoo, which I know is a very touristy thing, but it was awesome all the same, and looking at the Opera House while listening to the didgeridoo is one of those slap-in-the-face “I’m in Australia” reminders. Definitely a cool experience! I walked around the harbour, just taking it all in! It is a very beautiful and happening place. The Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens are beside the opera house so I walked around them for a few hours. There are so many little paths you can take that wind through some of the most spectacular gardens! If you walk all the way to the other end of the gardens, you come to Mrs. Macquarie’s chair, a huge rock built like a chair, where you get an amazing view of the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I then walked down Macquarie street back to Circular Quay and then on to the Rocks. The Rocks is Sydney's historic district beside the harbour. It was a seedy district in the 1800s, with pickpockets and criminals lurking around every corner. The government wanted to tear all of the buildings down in the 1970s to build new office buildings, but a group of people fought hard to save the historic district and buildings, and they all look just as they would have in the 1800s. It's an incredible step back in time walking through this area.

My first view of the Opera House!

The classic tourist shot with the Sydney Harbour bridge

The Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge as seen from Mrs. Macquarie's point in the Botanic Gardens

Sitting on Mrs. Macquarie's chair

I continued up to Observatory Hill, where you get a completely different view of the harbour. It was such a nice sunny day, and I sat on the grass admiring the views and resting my feet for a while. I then walked all the way back up to Central Station where I was meeting Lee after work, stopping to see a few more of the sights along the way including the Sydney Tower (which is one of their famous buildings but is very ugly in my opinion), the Queen Victoria Building, the Strand laneway (tons of glitzy, fancy shops) and Martin Place where they have the ANZAC day war memorial. Lee and I took the bus to her apartment, which is in the beautiful beach suburb of Coogee. She lives there with her boyfriend Ziggy and they were kind enough to let me stay there for a few days. It was a great place to stay while visiting Sydney, since it was only about a half hour bus ride to downtown Sydney and only a 5 minute walk to Coogee beach, one of Sydney’s many stunning beaches! That evening they took me to a great Thai restaurant, since Sydney is known for having the best thai food in Australia. It did not disappoint! It was a beautiful warm evening, and we sat out back in the garden, sharing a delicious curry, stir fry and noodle dish, and catching each other up on our lives. We finished the night off with a stop at an award-winning Sydney gelato joint. Definitely a good start to my Sydney trip!

View of the harbour from Observatory Hill

ANZAC day war memorial in Martin Place

The next morning I was up bright and early (and I mean EARLY…..at 3:15 am!!!). It was ANZAC day, an Australian public holiday where they honour all of the Australian and New Zealand soldiers who fought and died in the ANZAC battle. They have a dawn service at 4:30 am in every city across the country, but Sydney’s is the biggest. Lee and Ziggy were not brave enough to get up that early and attend it, but I figured it was my first ANZAC day in Australia, so I should really see what it’s all about and join the masses in honouring their soldiers. So I got a bus from their apartment at 3:45 and ventured into the city on my own. The service was in Martin Place (where the ANZAC day memorial is) and there were thousands of people there! It was a very solemn and moving ceremony, with speeches about the soldiers’ bravery and strength and wreaths laid on the memorial. It was incredibly beautiful and I’m so glad I made the effort to go. The service was done around 5:30, but it was quite a challenge to get back to their apartment since a lot of the roads had been closed and the buses were not running their usual routes. I eventually made it back a few hours later however, and fell right back asleep! I was up again at 10:30 to go to brunch at Bondi beach. Lee and I were meeting her friend there, as well as our friend Rachel, another girl we were on exchange with in Scotland. It was so great to see Rachel again, and we had a really nice brunch overlooking the famous Bondi beach! After brunch, Lee and I were meant to do the beach walk from Bondi back to Coogee beach, but it started absolutely pouring and we didn’t think it would be very enjoyable. So Lee’s friend gave us a ride back to the apartment instead, where we planned to wait out the rain. Luckily we didn’t have to wait long! About 15 minutes after getting home the skies cleared and it was the most glorious sunny day. So we headed out to do the beach walk as planned, however we did it in the other direction. The beach walk is a walk that many people do (both tourists and  locals) all along the coast between Coogee Beach and Bondi beach. There are many peninsulas and bays with some really incredible beaches along the way. It was stunning! The cliffs you walk along are incredible, and the beaches each have their own special “charm”. Some of them are very sheltered so are calm and good for playing around in the water and snorkeling, while some of them are much more rough and had many surfers out in the waves. We ended the walk at Bondi beach, which is another amazing thing to see since I have heard and seen so much about it. They have a popular TV show here called Bondi Rescue where the lifeguards at Bondi beach tell stories of swimmers getting lost, pulled under by undertows or attacked by sharks (which is EXTREMELY rare). It was pretty cool to actually be there. Although the pictures I’m used to seeing have thousands of people enjoying the beach, whereas there were only a handful of bathers and surfers when I was there (really shows you how Australians retreat inside once the summer is over). Lee and I stopped at a bar where we sat out on a deck overlooking the beach and had some snacks and a glass of wine. It was a perfect afternoon, with the skies clearing and the sun shining just in time for a stroll. That evening we stopped at a grocery store on the way home and cooked some kangaroo steaks for dinner :)



Coogee Beach...the start of the Beach walk

Cliffs along the beach walk

Lee and I on our afternoon stroll

Bondi beach!

The next morning, Lee and I were out the door by 9, heading into the city. We hopped on a ferry at Circular Quay on our way to Cockatoo Island.  Sydney had its annual Biennale art festival on while I was there, with modern art exhibits all over the city. Cockatoo Island was one of the locations where they had art pieces set up, so Lee and I went to check those out. The ferry ride was beautiful because we got to go along the harbour and see a lot of it that I hadn’t seen yet. We got to Cockatoo Island and explored the Island for a while before starting the art tour. Cockatoo Island used to be a penal island where they sent the convicts from other countries who had been banished to Australia. The convicts had to build all of the structures necessary to build ships, and it became a ship-building island. It was closed to the public for many years and was only just opened as a heritage site a few years ago. It now has instructional panels everywhere explaining about the ship building equipment and facilities as well as teaching people about the way the convicts lived back then. It was incredibly interesting and we enjoyed walking around the small island. We then joined a tour where an “eclectic” art enthusiast took us around the island to see about 8 different art pieces. It was very interesting but the art was so bizarre! I know that’s not technically correct to say about modern art because it’s beautiful in its own way, but as hard as I tried to appreciate it, it was just a bit too much for me. Our tour guide would take us to see things like clear plastic shapes hanging all around a room, or tattered curtains hanging that you had to walk through then she would spend a while explaining what the artist was trying to portray. The way she spoke about it all and what it meant was hilarious and Lee and I spent the whole time trying not to laugh. But we were very glad we did it…some of the pieces were pretty neat and it was definitely entertaining.

 

The rock in the centre shows how high the whole island used to be-the convicts dug all of that rock out all around the island!

 

Some of the ship building equipment on Cockatoo Island

We took the ferry back to Circular Quay and got on another ferry to Manly. Manly is a suburb of Sydney on the North side of the harbour and takes about 20 minutes to get to by ferry. The cliffs along the harbour were stunning and the scenery made it a very enjoyable ride. We walked along the beach in Manly, which is another popular surfing area in Sydney. We then walked along a boardwalk for a ways and got to a smaller beach called Shelley beach, where we climbed along boulders right on the edge of the water. It was from these boulders that we watched the sun set over Manly beach…a perfect scene for my last night in Sydney.

The sunset over Manly beach

 

Once we got back to Circular Quay on the south side of the harbour, we took a bus back to Lee’s suburb and went for a delicious sushi dinner. That was basically the end of my Sydney trip. I went home and packed, then went to sleep since I had a 6 am flight back to Melbourne. It was a fantastic trip and I can’t wait to go again! It’s not too expensive to fly there from Melbourne and there are so many things to do and see there…I barely scratched the surface so it’s definitely a place I will return to.

Horse Races, Wineries and Royalty

It’s been a long time coming, but I’m finally doing a post about my trip to Adelaide. I had the Friday and Monday of Easter weekend off and the following Friday off for ANZAC day weekend so decided to take off the whole week and make a trip out of it! It was great because I had a 10 day holiday and only had to take 3 days off. Some friends (Jen and Jim) that I had met during my camping trip in March had told me they would be driving home to Adelaide for the Easter weekend and they invited me to come along. They picked me up on Thursday night after work and we drove for 6 hours that night. At this point it was well past midnight and the driver was exhausted so we stayed overnight in a motel in a town called Bordertown (aptly named since it is on the border of Victoria and South Australia). The next morning we were up early and continued the drive to Murray Bridge, a town an hour outside of Adelaide. This is where Jen’s family has their “shack” on the river…which turned out to be unlike any shack I had ever seen! It was a gorgeous summer house surrounded by palm trees on the Murray River. The river is gorgeous with high red sandbanks. Jen’s family as well as a few other families had come from Adelaide to the shack for the long weekend and they welcomed me with open arms! They were all such friendly lovely people and I had a great day on the river. We went out on several boat rides where people water skied and tubed (I got to tube which was a lot of fun) and spent the rest of the day sitting by the river eating amazing food and drinking great beer and wine. It was cool to be around families again since I haven’t hung out in a family environment at all since I’ve been in Australia. Jen drove me into Adelaide that evening and I met up with my friend in town.

The puppy enjoying the wind in his hair!

"The shack" on Murray River

I went to Adelaide to visit my friend Tamara, who I had lived with while on exchange in Scotland. She's from Adelaide and we hadn’t seen each other since Scotland, which was over 2 years ago. When I got to Adelaide on Friday evening, Tamara met me at Jen’s house and we drove to her friend’s house where there was a BBQ/party. It was a fun night and was great to meet everyone since we ended up all spending the rest of the weekend together. The next day we all woke up early and got all dolled up for a day at the Clare Valley horse races! The horse races are huge deal in Australia. Every city and town throughout the country has their annual horse races and “horse race enthusiasts” travel long distances to come to them! I’ve even heard that we'll have a public holiday in November for the Melbourne horse race called Melbourne Cup. All of the girls get dressed up in summery flower dresses, heels and fastenators (the fancy hats/head bands that “sophisticated” women wear….like the ones that everyone wore at the Royal Wedding). I felt a little out of my element but it was fun to pretend that I was one of these sophisticated women for a day haha. We drove to Clare in the morning which is a beautiful wine region 2 hours North of Adelaide. I had a great time there! We spent the whole day hanging out, watching the races and just generally having a great time! I bet some money on a horse (not a lot, but I figured when in Rome…), but unfortunately, horse number 4 let me down L Once the races were done and it got dark, a stage was set up and they had some DJs playing music until the wee hours of the morning. We danced for hours, and when we got tired we walked to the car park and slept in the cars and vans we had driven there. It was a really cool experience since this is something so many Australians have been doing every year since they can remember so I was glad to be a part of it.

The horses crossing the finish line!

Tamara, Kim and I all dressed up!

The next day was very relaxed. We drove back to Adelaide and Tamara and her twin sister Kim took me to the suburb of Glenelg, the beach suburb of Adelaide. We walked along the beautiful beach and watched the sunset over the pier…it was a relaxing South Australian moment. South Australia is known for being much more slow and relaxed than the rest of Australia, with the people being friendly and chill. I definitely experienced this so it was the perfect place to be for my holiday.

The sunset at Glenelg beach

Tamara and Kim had the day off on the Monday since it was Easter Monday, so we drove to Handhorf, a small German town just outside of Adelaide. It feels like you’ve stepped out of Australia and right into Germany! The houses, cafes, shops and restaurants along the main street are modelled after German buildings and they sell German food and trinkets everywhere. It was quite touristy and a little kitchy, but still a cool place to wander around. We went strawberry picking when we got there which was lovely (and delicious!) then went to a classic Bavarian pub for lunch. A girl I had met through a friend in Melbourne (named Amy) came to meet us for lunch, where we enjoyed schnitzels and bratwursts. After lunch, the 4 of us drove a little out of town right into the heart of Adelaide Hills, one of South Australia’s many wine regions. It was a stunning region with rolling hills covered in beautiful vineyards! We went to two wineries, where you can sit out on their patios, overlooking the incredible scenery and try many of their wines for free! It was a sunny day with spectacular views and great wine and company!.Tamara and Kim drove straight back to Adelaide after we were done at the wineries, while Amy and I took the scenic route through the hills to get to the city. I went out for dinner with Amy and her friends when we got back to Adelaide, which was really nice.

Enjoying a glass of wine overlooking some Adelaide Hills vineyards

One of the delicious strawberries that we picked at the strawberry farm

I was on my own for the next few days since Tamara, Kim and Amy all had to work (the poor souls). On Tuesday I took a tram into town and hired a bike for the day. Adelaide has an amazing free bike hire service, where you can pick up a bike in the morning, take it wherever you'd like for the day then drop it back off in the evening. I biked all over Adelaide that morning, giving me a good feel for the city. It’s much smaller than Melbourne but is so pretty! It has some really amazing old buildings, including town hall, the festival centre, the parliament building, the South Australia Art Gallery and all of the University of Adelaide buildings. The downtown is situated on both sides of the Torrens River, which has a great bike path all along it. I biked along the river for quite a while and then through the beautiful Adelaide Botanic Gardens, before heading back into the CBD to the Central Markets to meet Tamara for lunch. The Central Markets is a huge market place in the middle of the city, open every day. It had some really delicious looking fresh food, and we grabbed lunch there and ate it out on the lawns outside. After lunch, she went back to work and I biked to the South Australia Museum, which is a really cool Natural History Museum (and was free!!!). I spent a few hours there, learning all about Australian animals and environments….so interesting!

South Australia Museum

One of the beautiful buildings on the University of Adelaide campus

I wasn’t completely sure what to do the next day, since I had seen most of the Adelaide “sights” the day before. That’s when I remembered that Kate and Wills were coming to South Australia  that day during their Australian Royal Visit …and I happened to be there so I figured why not?? On the Wednesday morning I got up early and took a bus to a town called Elizabeth (named after the Queen, as you may have guessed), about an hour out of Adelaide. Kate and Wills were flying in from Canberra (where they left Prince George) that morning. The streets were lined with THOUSANDS of people! I got really lucky though and happened to find a place along the road where they were driving in, and I was only one row back and could see it all so well! We waited there for a while and the energy and buzz around the area was insane! I’ve never been a die-hard royalty fan, but being there surrounded by excited fans was pretty contagious and I couldn’t wait for them to finally come! They drove by us and I saw Kate and Wills in the back of one of the cars in the convoy. I was only a few metres from the road and their car, and I swear I looked Kate in the eyes! It was really cool! They then went inside the Elizabeth youth centre for about an hour, where they met many of the youth of Elizabeth, who taught them how to be DJs on the turn tables (I only saw this on the news later…we had no idea what was going on inside while we were there). They then came outside and walked to the stage above the skate park where they watched a bike demonstration from some of the kids. I could see them so well at this point so that was pretty cool. They were given a skateboard as a gift for George which was nice. When this was done they got back into their cars and drove to a square nearby where they attended the official ceremony to name the square “Prince George Square". I couldn’t see them at all at this point since there were over 50 thousand people in the square trying to catch a glimpse of them. It was insane! With security guards galore! I even saw a sniper on a roof and I have no doubt that they were hidden everywhere! It was a really cool and fun thing to be a part of and I’m glad I went…one of those life experiences to check off the list!

Kate and Wills with Prince George's skateboard

I took a bus back into the city and continued to explore the areas of the city I hadn’t seen yet. I wandered along Rundell Mall which is a really cool outdoor shopping street. I then crossed the river and walked up to Light’s Vision. Colonel Light is the man who designed the layout of the city and there is a statue of him pointing to his city below up at the area called Light’s Vision. It has a cool vantage point of the city and river. Nearby is St. Peter’s Cathedral, a gorgeous cathedral surrounded by some beautiful gardens.

Colonel Light pointing to his city below

St. Peter's Church

At 5pm I met Tamara and Kim outside Tam’s work and we drove 20 minutes to get to the base of Mount Lofty. Mount Lofty is the highest point (the elevation is 727 m) in the Southern Mount Lofty Ranges, with an incredible panoramic view of Adelaide and the ocean. We wanted to get to the top before the sunset, which was really quite ambitious since that only gave us about 30 minutes to get to the top. That proved to not be possible, even though we were booking it up there. It’s a pretty tough hike since it’s very steep and is relentless…it was a really good workout! The sun was setting while we were climbing it, and we got some amazing views of the colourful sunset over the vistas and hills. The highlight of the climb for me was seeing a joey right beside the trail, only metres away from us! It was completely dark by the time we got to the top and we had an incredible view of the city lights below. We planned to bring some headlamps and torches for the walk back down but stupidly forgot them. The only thing we had to guide us down was the flash of my camera, so I had to keep pressing the button of the camera to get the flash to turn on haha. When we got to the bottom we were exhausted and starving so we stopped and grabbed some amazing Indian food for dinner on the way home. That was the end of my South Australia adventure, since I flew to Sydney early the next morning. I had a really fun week there and was able to see so much of the city as well as a lot of the countryside and towns outside of Adelaide. I loved seeing and spending time with Tamara again, and I really enjoyed meeting all of her friends there. It was a fantastic trip and I hope to be able to make it back there one day!

Waterfall at the base of Mount Lofty

Sunset from Mount Lofty

A joey on the side of the trail!