Sydney, Down Under
Sydney, Down Under
Even though it feels like ages ago that we were in Sydney (30/4 – 9/5), the memory is still quite vivid. This is because of the vibrant atmosphere we experienced there. After an almost exciting episode with the Aussie customs, we took a bus to Coogee Beach where we stayed the first couple of nights. I say ‘almost exciting episode’ as I only realised that I still was carrying banana chips in my rug sack when I was going through customs. This was not appreciated and they were confiscated. Unfortunately, the weather was cloudy when we got there, and rained over the course of our first days there. Luckily, the temperature was nice which we could appreciate after arriving from NZ. At first we were only going to stay in Sydney for the weekend, and fly out to Melbourne. But as we had such a great time over the weekend with David and Mya who showed us around, we decided to stay longer. They took us to the Sydney Fish market for some fresh fish/oysters, cocktails in Newtown and dinner in Balmain. It’s always great to experience a new place with locals. Obviously, one of the first things we did was to go and see the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. We did this on the first night we arrived there and did a tour in the Opera House a couple days later. The House is such an interesting place; a true piece of art which it’s creator, the architect sadly enough never got to see finished. I don’t believe that there are many buildings from the early 70’s that today still have a modern look like this one. It’s a shame we did not make it to see a performance there.
After 3 nights of staying at Coogee Beach, we checked in at a hostel more in the city. At this point I didn’t know the different neighbourhoods that well yet, and chose a hostel with a walking distance to the CBD. Later at dawn, when all the neon lights were turned on, I would realise that Kings Cross is quite an ‘entertainment’ area, compared to our very own ‘Walletjes’ in Amsterdam. From here we walked every day into the city and explored the different areas. Especially Chinatown was one that we liked a lot. It was also interesting how the different shopping malls where connected underground. We would walk in one side of the street and come out later totally un-orientated, outside on the street again to only realise that we walked underground to the other side.
After a couple of days of strolling around the city, it was time for some ‘eco tourism’. We took a 2 day tour to the Blue Mountains where we did some nice walks and visited the ‘Three Sisters’ which is a rock formation with three peaks. Once back in Sydney, it was time for some wine tasting in Hunter Valley. We visited 3 vineyards and had lunch at one of them, which was the smallest of all. It was a beautiful sunny day to have lunch outside, in this magnificent area. We even got to pad a small cow there, which was really cute J
By this time we were finished our itinerary for Australia, with the help of David & Mya. Unfortunately, we had to make a decision to skip some parts of Oz that we wanted to see. This was Melbourne and Ayers Rock. We decided that we would only do the east coast, starting in Sydney and go all the way up north to Cape Tribulation and do this well instead of having to rush it. So, we sat down one day we booked our east coast trip and a rainforest trip at Cape Tribulation with Oz Experience. Based on the good experience we had with their sister company, Kiwi Ex we chose them for our Oz trip. So on Saturday the 9th our stay in Sydney ended, as our east coast OzExperience was due to commence (too) early in the morning. It was with sad feelings that we left as we really started to like this city a lot, even though winter started to kick in. Both of us had the feeling that we could easily stay there for a while and fit in. We will definitely come back some day…when it’s a bit warmer ;-)
