I always imagined Sydney to be sunny, it wasn’t of course. When we arrived it was absolutely chucking it down. Typically, the weather always seems to be against us when we’re burdened with all of our belongings. We had a fierce desire to not have everything we owned get all soggy, so we needed a plan. We could have just hung out in the train station, really get our monies worth (it did cost us $20 each for a forty five minute train after all) but that didn’t seem to be the most fun course of action. Instead we googled a local cafe to hang out in and to also grab some lunch; with Sydneys space at a premium this option turned out to be al fresco, but at least there was a awning to shelter us from the worst of the weather.
Our hotel had some terrible reviews. It was pretty basic, but thankfully most of the worst reviews seemed to be unfounded, in our opinion at least. It was just a room with a shared bathroom, no frills and not really much soundproofing, it was also only £82 a night which (for the location) was a steal. The best thing about the hotel was the area it was in - this did come and bite us in the wallets a bit with most of the local dinner options being on the pricier side - but it was clean and pretty, and full of interesting architecture.
We had some afternoon hours to fill so despite the frequent downpours we donned our rain coats and headed off to Paddington. The plan was to head to Paddington market, sadly we managed to mistime things so we arrived a tad too late and dismantling had already begun. We had a quick look at what stalls were left, and their slightly wet and windblown wares (we got assaulted by a stalls worth of handmade cards caught in a gale) before giving up and perusing the local shops instead. With the rain somehow getting progressively worse, we decided that we were wet enough and it was time to head back to Potts Point and our hotel - good thing we'd taken our waterproof coats with us!
After a pretty decent dinner at a local pizzeria and a sleep only interrupted but the loudest of the obnoxiously revvy cars, we woke up early the next morning to walk through the royal botanical gardens, to get a good view of the Opera house before it got too busy. I enjoyed the walk, weaving through the quiet neighbourhood streets and passing by the navel base dotted with behemoth war ships before entering the gardens themselves - joined only by 100's of Sydney's early morning joggers. Here we hugged the shore line, passing by a popular salt-water swimming pool overlooking Woolloomooloo bay, until we finally arrived at Mrs Macquarie's chair, a famous spot in the Botanical gardens that over looks the Opera house.
As we sat on a bench, covering ourselves in the crumbs of the pastries we brought along with us, we couldn’t help but be slightly underwhelmed. The opera house wasn’t as big as we expected, or so blindingly white; there also seemed to be a giant bridge behind it and the rest of the city too, things suspiciously absent in most photos we’ve previously seen of it. Maybe it’s selective memory or maybe its clever angles and editing. We could have walked closer to find out for sure, but we’d seen it now and there was many more places to explore.
Next on the agenda was the Sydney Fish Market, a harbour-side market that has been running in different iterations since 1966. This too wasn’t quite as we imagined. It sold seafood of all sorts, raw, cooked and (in the case of the more pricier crustaceans) live; it was just far less gritty than we thought it would be - aimed more at tourists than the local chefs. I was particularly drawn to the mud crabs, perhaps it was the big signs demanding that we “DO NOT TOUCH”, but I had an overwhelming intrusive desire to pick one up. After a brief but intense internal battle, I decided to get a cooked tiger prawn as a snack instead. Somehow I got tricked into paying $28 and buying three prawns instead of one, but at least they were nice. Ben went for the far more sophisticated sushi option, after a small amount of cajoling I convinced him to try one of my prawns too; leaving both of us covered in a sticky chilli sauce with no real way to clean ourselves up.
The rest of the day was spent wandering. First to China Town, were we entered the bizarre "Paddy's Market" Haymarket - a place self described as " an enduring market selling eclectic goods". From that description i'm sure you can imagine all the tat sold there, that and one nice microfibre Bondi beach themed beach towel that Ben just had to have. Feeling like we deserved another treat, we headed to Dragon Pastry for some traditional Chinese treats. Both of our treats were taro based, mine sweet and Ben's savoury featuring a salted egg yolk center.
Feeling quite worn out at this point (we had planned to do some of this exploration via public transport but somehow ended up walking the entire thing... again) we could have happily headed home for a rest, but decided to head to the Queen Victoria building instead. The QVB, designed by George McRae and built in 1898, started life as a fancy market place, and after time spent as a library and offices, it is a fancy shopping centre again today. The imposing Romanesque building houses fancy clothing boutiques, antique dealers, tea shops and all manner of expensive things that we couldn't afford. After a while of wandering around and staring wistfully, we instead headed to another nearby mall that was more in our price range to finish our holiday shopping.
On our third and final day in Sydney we headed away from the centre and to the beach instead.
The day started out grey and overcast, a vast improvement to the showers we'd been plagued with the following days but not exactly beach weather. By the time we made it to Bronte Beach (where we were planning on having our brunch) the clouds had left the sky and the sun was shining down and we really regretted not bringing our swimming gear along.
The Coop, Bronte is a trendy cafe that sells yummy, slightly overpriced food in a stunning location overlooking Bronte beach. We know for a fact that it was on the dearer side as the girls on the table next to us wouldn't, and quite possibly couldn't stop going on about it. As we had looked at the menu prior to arriving we weren't at all surprised, and having never spent time in Queensland I couldn't tell for sure one of the girls claims that breakfast is only $15 there is really true. Anyway, breakfast was delicious, and set us up for the 6.5km costal walk to Bondi we had planned.
Before we left the restaurant our server gave us a tip on the walk, telling us just to follow the coast along and to ignore google maps as it would just give us a tour of the local housing developments instead - apparently this happens a lot. The walk seemed to take no time at all, as we followed along the purpose built path that skirted along the top of the cliffs that separate the two beaches. There seemed to be surfers everywhere, sat out on the surfboards waiting to catch the right wave. The swimmers were mostly contained to sea pools, like the free more naturally formed pools at Bronte and the ticketed man made pools at the most southern edge of Bondi. At the end of the walk we were content to sit on the grass above Bondi beach and just watch the world go by, at least until we got thirsty and headed off into the town in search of a drink.
We spent a hour or so trawling through the op shops at Bondi, seeing if the cooler area had a better range of clothes for us to buy. The clothes were definitely more diverse - hello 80's shoulder pads - but not really anything that would be useful for our upcoming travels. Satisfied that we'd had our fill of the area, we hopped on a bus to Bondi Junction, where we decided we'd walk the rest of the way back rather than catching a train.
The walk took us about an hour, and happened to pass:
A lovely little sandwich shop, where we grabbed a bite to eat and endured some rather rude but comfortingly British service.
Centennial Park, where we stopped to eat said sandwich and all the cake we brought.
Rushcutters Bay, where fancy city people park their yachts.
Feeling accomplished, we also treated ourselves to a fancy meal out at local Greek restaurant Apollo, it was our last night in the city after all.
Trip date : April 2024
Up next: Vietnam!
PS : They have double decker trains here...
Great chapter and really well written too! The pics tell the same story!