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.