First days in Sydney
After four beautiful days spent in Sydney we are on board of plane heading off to Cairns and I’m trying to write down all the exciting things which we’ve experienced so far. This is our first trip to Australia and with a little help of Google we’ve chosen these two cities for our target destinations.
On Friday morning we woke up into a wonderful day in Wellington. As luck would have it, the weather was simply perfect and we were leaving. Moreover after landing at Sydney airport we were welcomed by rain and grey sky. There must be something wrong with us.
As we’d had really good experience with YHA backpackers during Christmas holidays, we’d decided to book the same chain in Australia. In Sydney we stayed close to the central railway station which was a handy starting point for all our trips. The only problem which occurred during the first night was that one of our roommate started to snore, but he snored really, really LOUDLY!
Evening before day one
After we lodged ourselves in a room we set off to explore the nearest surroundings. It was Good Friday night and streets were full of people. Or, maybe we’d just been too long in small Wellington and suddenly there were a lot of space around us, a lot of people, wide streets, tall buildings and all that metropolitan whirl.
Suddenly, we enjoyed all these normally annoying things. We were walking along the busy street, looking around and tried to decide where we would have dinner. Eventually, we selected a Thai restaurant. It wasn’t bad, but nothing special. Red and green curry, rice and some fried fish pieces. Quite hot. The important finding – it’s not common to pay by a credit card everywhere. So with no cash in pocket, Jakub went to find an ATM and I stayed in the restaurant as a bond.
Day one
It was raining. Slightly, but it was raining. We’d ran from Wellington to enjoy warm and sunny Australian weather and instead of that the first thing we bought here were umbrellas. But at least they rescued our day. We had to change our plan as well and instead of Toranga Zoo we went to explore the city.
We started the day with visiting a local market. Fruit, vegetable, meat, fish, pastry, flowers, doggie biscuits. The perfect place where we could enjoy a breakfast - a croissant and fresh juice.
Afterwards, we took a train to the Darlington Harbour to see the Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House. On the train we had to look like the lost tourists as we were mumbling and staring on the train lines map and a woman immediately asked us whether we need some help. Nice people here :-).
In harbour we spent some time strolling around. We made one unsuccessful attempt to walk over the Harbour Bridge as we didn’t find the right way and one successful attempt to set the alarm at the closed oversea terminal whose escalators were running so we had thought we could go to the lookout up there. No, we couldn’t.
After that we cruised on city’s ferry to Manly. There was a great view of entire harbour from ferry for whole time of cruise until we got to the point where the harbour is open to the ocean. On that day, in fact, we experienced the enormous swell as the driver informed us. Finally, in Manly we got off the ferry with a bit sick faces but alive. A friendly woman in an information centre equipped us with all kind of different maps and we were ready to set off. But firstly we needed some energy so we had brunch in a recommended small but nice cafe called The Moustache. They served yummy meals.
During the walk along Manly beach we watched the surfers fighting with rough sea but after a while we had to give it up and walked back towards ferry because the rain started to be heavy. The rest of the afternoon we spent around the Opera House and the Royal Botanic Garden, which is a nice relaxing oasis just right next to the busy city center.
We finished the day with taking the photos of the city covered by night from the Harbour Bridge. Eventually, we found the walkway to up there and the view of illuminated night city was amazing. No matter it was raining, anymore.