We landed on Christmas morning, and after a quick Krispy Kreme break we decided to catch a public bus to our hotel at Bondi Beach. Bondi is an area a couple stops on the train from the center of the city and is one of many great beaches along a line that dots the eastern coastline of the Pacific. After catching up with our friend Hayley for a bit, we headed down to the beach for an afternoon of sun and surf which apparently is the thing to do on Christmas Day in Australia. I do have to admit that I was pretty shocked how chilly the water was, but once you were in it was pretty nice. The weather couldn't have been better and it was a pretty surreal Christmas day.
That night we found a couple public bbqs on the north end of the beach and had a nice bbq during the sunset. It was a perfect way to end the day.
The next day my friend Amy told us about a great yacht race that starts in the harbor of Sydney and goes for days until they reach Tasmania. We agreed to meet her in Watsons Bay to see the start of the race. Unfortunately, we were a bit late and just missed the boats, but we still had some great views of the city and the rugged coastline. We were also able to grab some fresh fish n chips!
From Watsons Bay, we caught a quick ferry to Circular Quay which is where the famous Sydney Opera House is. We had incredible views of the harbor during the ride, and as we got closer to the city the views of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge were awesome! Once we landed, we spent the afternoon walking around the sights and taking it all in. The Opera House was pretty impressive, although I have to admit it's starting to look a bit old and faded.
We eventually made our way to an area called The Rocks, which is Sydney's oldest part of the city. It's an oddly quaint mix of Old-West architecture with a European feel. I was able to snap my favorite picture of the Harbour bridge from the small hilltop here. We also enjoyed a few beers at an authentic German brauhaus. We were seated outside on long wooden tables when suddenly our waitress brought us the bill and told us we had to move quickly as it was going to start raining in 20 minutes. Sure enough, 20 minutes later a heavy rain storm approached and it rained the rest of the night.
The rain continued all night and through the entire next day. It was a bit of a bummer because it meant we couldn't really do any sightseeing, however we did manage to stroll through the shopping district of Bondi and catch a movie at Sydney's largest cinema screen. Of course we had a couple pub stops as well!
New Years in Sydney definitely lived up to the hype, although I think our experience was a bit different from the conventional. We picked up a camper van on NYE, but we had to find a place to park it for one night before we left the city. Not only that, but we also had to make sure we were at a convenient place to either see or travel along with the millions of others to watch the fireworks. After a couple hours of driving around, stocking up on some food and getting used to driving the van in an unknown city without a SatNav, we randomly came across a beautiful area called Double Bay. We found a parking spot just across a small park that sat right on the Harbor and was only a 15 minute walk to Darling Point which had an amazing view of the entire city and Harbor Bridge for the fireworks. We even had the added plus of public bathrooms in the park. We later found out that this was one of Sydney's nicest areas, which probably explains why we felt so out of place drinking beer and eating Doritos on the ground outside of our van while posh people passed by dressed for their New Years parties or walking their fu-fu dogs.
We started the night with some snacks by the van, and then enjoyed some sparkling wine we purchased the day before when visiting some Australian wineries in Hunter Valley. We eventually made our way over to Darling Point to watch the fireworks. We even met a few other travelers doing the same thing, and enjoyed a few sausage dogs being sold by a local rotary club. The fireworks were incredible and stretched all along the harbor in a synchronized array. I know the pics below are blurry, but you get the idea.
After we returned to Sydney a few days later, we had one last day to see some of the sights we hadn't seen. We started by driving our camper van over the Harbour Bridge! Unfortunately it was another gray day, but we toughened up anyway and visited the Darling Harbour area. We enjoyed a nice pizza lunch on a balcony overlooking the water and then walked around the harbor to see the sights. Eventually the light showers turned in to a steady rain so we headed back to Bondi to park the van for our last night in Australia.
I left Sydney with a new appreciation for Australia and hoping for a return to this great city. For any of you that would like to visit Sydney, or Australia in general, I do have to say that I have been twice now, once in a summer and once in winter, and the weather isn't as great as you would stereotypically think. Even in the middle of the summer we had a few chilly, windy and wet days that were fairly miserable. Although most of the time it's nice and when it's nice, it's incredible!
Happy New Year!!
(HEY! YOU! Yeah, you! Do you see the comment box and reaction checkboxes below? If you made it this far, push one of them!)
envious
ReplyDeleteNice :)
ReplyDelete