Sea stacks along Australia coastline, as seen off of the Great Ocean Road
Melbourne's Federation Square at night
Melbourne skyline at night along Yarra River
Bondi Beach
Colorful beach boxes in Melbourne
Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge
Sydney Harbour Bridge at night
We're very fortunate to have been able to travel to Australia. It was our first trip overseas and we learned a few things on our way to having an awesome trip. There were so many impressive sights, interesting scenes, and memorable moments that we brought back with us that it took us almost two months to share it all with you.
Our first day there was a lot of fun and our first night hanging out with our friends was possibly the best night of the trip, as we all had a great time together.
One of the best things we did was our day tour along the Great Ocean Road. It was nice to be taken around to all the sights and it the scenery was amazingly beautiful. We were fortunate to have good weather and be able to appreciate such wonderful natural beauty of the ocean, shoreline, hills, trees, and - most impressively - the rock formations in the water.
We had a great time in Melbourne. The whole city was amazing - the CBD, the neighborhoods, all the shops and restaurants, the tram system, etc. However, one of our favorite places was Federation Square in the middle of the CBD. It was a great location to see Melbourne's architectural history and to experience the city.
Sydney was great too. The harbor was beautiful and the very curvy shoreline offered plenty of scenic vantage points to see the skyline, the opera house, and the bridge. I also really enjoyed relaxing in the sun and watching the waves come in at Bondi Beach. And, I had a great time exploring some of Sydney's suburbs, which were historic and lively with lots of places to eat and shop.
Overall, it was a great trip and it's been a lot of fun reliving it over these past several weeks.
Our trip to Australia was our first international trip and there were a few things that we learned from it.
We were a little intimidated by traveling internationally, but it wasn't that big of a deal. The worst part was connecting in Los Angeles, so I'll try to avoid flying through there again, if at all possible. Otherwise, it was fine.
We exchanged some cash once we arrived in Australia, and it was very helpful that we were able to use our friends' bank and avoid exhorbitant fees. Without that luxury, I suppose we would've had to use one of the many expensive currency exchange services. We realized a few days into the trip that we could use our Capital One card without any foreign currency transaction fees that many credit card providers charge, so we could've spent less cash if we'd planned for that from the beginning.
We also traveled at one of the worst times for the exchange rate. The Australian dollar was reaching record highs while we were there, meaning that every dollar we spent in Australia cost us more American Dollars than it would have if the exchange rate were a little more beneficial.
I'm really glad we went when we did, though. Being able to visit a foreign country, or anywhere new for that matter, is so much better when you know someone there who can take you around. That's what made this trip so special - that we were able to spend most of it with some of our best friends. Not only did their guidance around the city help us to experience the best of Melbourne, but we just had a great time hanging out.
Nando’s - Nando's is probably Adam's favorite place to eat at in Melbourne. It was nicer than a fast food place, but not quite a restaurant. They have "Portugese-style" chicken sandwiches. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but the chicken and fries have a special seasoning on them that makes them taste really good. I got the chicken sandwich on a ciabatta roll all three times we went there. The food there was way better than anything I’ve had at a fast food place in the US. They also have a special spicy “Peri-Peri” sauce you can add to your sandwich that isn’t too spicy, even for me.
Bob’s Kitchen - I don’t know if I was just especially hungry or what, but the food at Bob’s Kitchen was amazing. I talked about it the entire time we were in Australia. We all shared several kinds of dumplings, which are basically small pockets of dough that contain pork, crab meat, chicken, and other meats. We also shared a noodle dish with vegetables. I wish we’d had a chance to go back.
Max Brenner - This place was so good that we went there three times. Most, if not all, dishes have some form of chocolate with them. The chocolate soufflé was just incredible and probably really bad for you, but who cares! I especially liked the gigantic cinnamon roll with chocolate sauce for dipping. Why aren’t chocolate cafes more popular in the US?
Peking Duck place - I don't know what this place was actually called, but it was a good introduction to the Peking Duck dish that originated from China. We tried this place in Chinatown and the food was really good. We ordered one and a half ducks, which came with tortilla-like pieces of bread and plum sauce. It was a lot of food for the four of us and we barely finished it.
Ying Thai 2 - I had some of the best Thai food I’ve ever had here. The ambiance was neat inside and the portions were huge. The coconut jasmine rice was really sweet tasting and almost could have been a dessert. I had the Pad Thai, which was excellent and wasn’t too spicy at all.
Bread Top/Barby's - I really wish we had these places in the US. They sell pastries (sort of like dim sum) that taste so good and are pretty cheap. We ate breakfast at these places probably 4 times when we were in Australia. My favorite was probably the coconut bun or the blueberry twist. It’s just so hard to find good, cheap pastries here besides donuts which are too sweet sometimes.
Australia and the US are pretty similar, but in our two weeks in Australia, there were a few things that we were used to finding in the US that we missed.
I mentioned how the pedestrian signals make sound in Australia, which is great, but they didn't count down. In Seattle, most pedestrian signals count down so you know how much time is left (though they often don't give you enough warning), but in Australia we didn't know how much time was left before the lights changed, which made it hard to judge if we still had time to cross or should wait.
It's nice not having to tip at restaurants, but on the flip side of that, service was not as attentive. It wasn't negligent, but it was slower-paced. At times it would've been nice to have had more attentive service.
Furthermore, when we went to restaurants, getting a big bottle of room-temperature water for the table to share was common practice. It was nice having water there, and I didn't mind not having ice. The only problem was that they hardly ever brought us more. As if four people are supposed to share a single 1.5 liter bottle of water throughout an entire meal after spending all afternoon out walking around the city.
Furthermore, drinking fountains are uncommon in Australia. We often got thirsty and, well, there just wasn't anywhere to drink from or to refill our water bottles. How inconvenient.
Credit cards were not accepted nearly as much. Some places didn't accept them at all and most places had a minimum charge of $15 or so. As someone who charges basically everything so that I don't have to deal with cash and can accrue points with my credit card, not getting to charge stuff like normal was an annoying adjustment.
Overall, though, there didn't seem to be that many things that we're used to in the US that we couldn't find in Australia, but it would have been nice if these few things had been different.
I was a little surprised with how similar Australia is to the United States. But, having a heavy British influence and being on the other side of the world from the US, Australia did have a few interesting differences and a few things that I'd like to see here in the US:
One nice thing about making credit card charges in Australia was that rather than signing a piece of paper that nobody ever verifies, you entered a PIN for pretty much every transaction. It seemed like a much more reliable way of verifying that you were the owner of the credit card you were using. I really never understood why you have to sign your receipt here because, really, nobody ever looks at it and it's more work than typing in a PIN.
Crosswalks in Australia all featured sound, which was helpful when crossing, since the sound changed when it was time to walk and when the time remaining to cross was running out. Some of the crosswalks here have sound, but not as many, and the sounds at the crosswalks in Australia were more useful, and I'm sure appreciated by the blind.
All prices at stores and restaurants include tax. Having tax included is so helpful and so much more logical than the way we do things. Plus, at restaurants, tips were not expected, so I didn't have to multiply by 15% every time I ate out and what we saw was what we paid. It seemed like such a convenient and sensible way of doing things.
Melbourne and Sydney both had a lot of cafes. It would be great if there were more sidewalk cafes here. You know, an inexpensive place to stop for lunch or dessert or tea or whatever.
All toilets in Australia have two buttons for flushing - one button to flush with a small amount of water and another button for, um, bigger flushing needs. But that makes so much sense. Why should every flush use the same amount of water, when there's normally not a need to use that much water. Just another simple and sensible idea.
Another common environmentally-friendly feature is that electrical outlets have switches. So, rather than unplugging something you're not using, you can just flip the switch to turn it off. There are a lot of things that use electricity when they're plugged in, even if you're not using them, such as cell phone chargers and electronics. It would be really convenient to be able to just turn them off at the switch to save that electricity instead of having to unplug them.
I saw the best hand dryer in the world in the Melbourne Airport. Not only did I see it, but in fact I got to use it. It's a Dyson Airblade and you insert your hands and it blows a blade of air, which blows the water off as you slowly pull your hands out. It dried my hands more completely and quickly than using a regular hand drier or paper towels. This isn't unique to Australia, and it wasn't common there, but it's the best way I've ever dried my hands, which is saying something considering that I've washed and dried them a lot of times since I was born.
Australian bills of currency were much more interesting than ours in the US. They were very colorful, for one thing, which make our bills look very boring in comparison. One thing that is better, though, is that the bills have various different anti-counterfeit measures. And, they're easier to use by blind people because of the differences between denominations that you can feel. By contrast, United States bills can't be told apart by blind people because they all feel the same. Also, Australia doesn't have pennies, and even though we were using more coins because they have $1 and $2 coins instead of bills, not having a 1 cent piece makes it easier to pay with cash.
I'm sure there are some other things in Australia that would be worth bringing over here, probably some not quite as trivial as what I've mentioned, but I'd be happy if we could see some of these good ideas in the US.
The best cities in the world have good public transportation, including Melbourne and Sydney. Each of them had extensive heavy rail networks. Melbourne had multiple train lines and hundreds of train stations connecting the whole area. Sydney's rail network was similarly sized.
One thing that Melbourne had was a great public tram system. We have a single streetcar line in Seattle and are talking about adding more, but Melbourne is way ahead of us. The trams serve the CBD very well and go outside of the CBD to serve the inner city, similarly to how buses would, but easier to access and with a dedicated right of way.
Sydney didn't have trams, which made it more difficult for us to get around the CBD. However, Sydney has a pretty extensive ferry network to serve a lot of areas along its harbor.
Surprisingly, both cities are fairly low-density outside of the CBD, and part of this is because of the extensive heavy rail networks, which have been place for more than a century, and allowed locals to live more than walking-distance away from the CBD. The heavy rail networks were very well used, though, and very extensive.
We didn't get a good taste of the bus system in either city, but Sydney had more buses because they didn't have trams.
Overall, public transportation was great over there. Seattle's definitely a smaller city, but our public transportation system is a far cry from the great systems of Melbourne and Sydney.
We finally come to our last day in Australia. We had more pastries from Bread Top for breakfast and went through Paddy's Market again briefly. We finished eating our blueberry pastry at Hyde Park, close to our hotel. It was a nice morning to walk through the park and relax. We were supposed to check out of our hotel at 10:00 in the morning, but we were able to ask for an extension until 11. Our flight wasn't until 2:00 in the afternoon, so we wanted to drag around our luggage for as little time as possible.
We finished packing our suitcases and took everything to Hyde park to hang out for about another hour. We saw some guy in the park blowing really big bubbles, which was cool to watch. We wish we could have done more and stayed longer, but we made ourselves get on the train to go to the airport around noon.
There wasn't much to eat in the airport. We ended up sharing a big piece of overpriced pepperoni pizza for lunch. We got our passports stamped again when we went through security to leave Australia (which was really cool - we have one stamp for when we arrived in Melbourne and one for when we left Sydney) and stood around in the terminal for quite a while waiting for the plane to be ready. It boarded about 30 minutes late and we finally took off around 3:00 on October 10th.
I don't remember much about the flight back, except that I didn't like the food as much. It was also much more difficult to sleep on the flight back for some reason. I only slept 2-3 hours during the entire 13 hour flight back to Los Angeles. We also had seats on the left side of the plane, but thankfully the person sitting in the window seat only got up twice, so that wasn't too inconvenient. I did watch a few movies, including Australia with Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman, two Australia natives, and The Duchess.
We landed in Los Angeles on time, at 10am, also on October 10th, the same day as when we left because we crossed the international date line. We had about 2 hours to get through customs and security in the domestic terminal. Our flight left for Seattle at 12:30pm and we landed around 3. It didn't take long for us to get our luggage, thankfully it made it with us. We road Link Light Rail back to downtown and transferred to the 70 bus that takes us within a block of our apartment.
Man, were we tired. We hadn't gotten much sleep during the flights and had basically been awake for more than 24 hours. We actually put away a lot of stuff, did some laundry, and ordered a Pagliacci pizza for dinner.
Visiting Australia was one of the best things Troy and I have ever done. We wish we could have spent even more time there, because 2 weeks just isn't enough time. Hopefully we'll be able to go back some day.
The first thing we did on our final day in Sydney was exchange some money because by this time we had run out of Australian dollars. Unfortunately this time, the exchange charge was like $20 instead of $8 that it cost us when we exchanged the majority of our money at the start of the trip through Sofia's Australian bank. Also, the exchange rate at the end of the trip was much worse than when we first got to Australia, so we didn't get as many Australian dollars for our American dollars.
We took the train to Paddy's Market, in the southwestern part of the CBD. We arrived at the market after a little difficulty, since we weren't sure which way to go from the train station. Paddy's Market was similar to the Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne, but wasn't nearly as big and didn't have as much produce, food, or restaurants. We bought a few souveniers, including a small replica of a boomerang and a sweatshirt for me. The top level of the market is actually a mall. We were hungry and expected to find food at the market, but since we didn't, we decided to get some cheesecake at a coffee shop in the mall.
We continued walking through Chinatown, which is right next to Paddy's Market and then ate at an authentic Malaysian food place called Mamak for lunch. I had the chicken satay with sweet and spicy peanut sauce and Troy had the chicken curry soup with potatoes.
It started raining after lunch, so we decided to go to the Contemporary Art Museum in the Circular Quay so we could be indoors for a while. I'm not a big fan of contemporary art, so I wasn't that impressed. There was a lot of strange art, but we did like a few things such as a room full of small glass sculptures in ponds and metal wire sculptures. After the museum, we walked through The Rocks again and went back through the CBD, including the Strand Arcade again, where we sat and rested for a while.
We knew we'd have a hard time finding food for dinner, so we decided to try to find a Greek place we'd researched before the trip to see if we might want it. We finally found it, but the menu posted outside was a little expensive for our taste. For some reason we were really tired from walking all day (and all day the past 12 days for that matter), so we went back to the hotel to rest and check out the observation deck on the 45th floor.
We decided to head back to The Rocks to eat at an Italian restaurant we had seen earlier in the day. I had some sort of ravioli and I forget what Troy had. We also had some wine with dinner, which was nice.
The last thing we did was take the train back to Newtown for some dessert. We had cookies and cream cheesecake and english breakfast tea. It was nice to relax and think about all the fun we had had the past 13 days.
Originally we thought we would take public transportation to the Blue Mountains, about 60 miles west of Sydney. However that would have cost us about $50 per person and we would have had to figure out where exactly to stop and what to do ourselves. So we decided at the last minute to book a day tour for $90 per person instead. This tour was not as good as the Great Ocean Road and it also wasn't as pretty, but it was still worth the trip and it was easier to do with a tour than by ourselves.
We waited at our hotel to be picked up by the tour company and they were about 30 minutes late, which was a little annoying since we had gotten up so early to meet them. We still had to pick up more people before we headed out to Olympic Park, where the 2000 summer Olympics were held in Sydney. There wasn't much to see there, but they did have the torch near one of the parking lots and plaques of all the medal winners. At the entrance of ANZ Stadium, there's a ring hanging on the building that has a feather from the national bird of every country that participated in those Olympics, which I thought was really cool.
After that short stop, we continued on to a small touristy town of Leura on the edge of the Blue Mountains. There were a few cute shops there, including a place to buy candles and other decorations and a candy store with lots of candy from all over the world. We didn't spend much time here either before we went to the next stop, which was finally inside the Blue Mountains. We rode a small train called the Scenic Railway down into the mountains. It claims to be the steepest train in the world, with a downgrade of about 52 degrees. It was pretty darn steep and there wasn't much to hold us in our seats except for the rail and seat in front of us and the cage above our heads. In retrospect, it probably isn't very safe. It was kind of funny though because they played the theme song to Indiana Jones as we headed down on the train.
Once at the bottom, there was a network of boardwalks going through the rain forest and it wasn't too busy, which was surprising. After spending about 30 minutes walking around the rain forest, we took the Scenic Cableway back up to the visitor's center. We had some good views from the top.
After that we ate lunch at a cafeteria type place, which was nothing special. I had the fish and chips and Troy had roast lamb. It was interesting talking to some of the other people on the tour during lunch. One guy was from New York City and had an interesting accent and smacked his food a lot. We also talked to a woman with her husband and kids and found out they used to live in Fort Worth, specifically in Wedgwood. They now live in Canberra because the husband works for Lockheed Martin and they transferred him there. It's a small world indeed I suppose.
The most popular viewpoint in the Blue Mountains is called Echo Point, where the Three Sisters are located. The Blue Mountains are named so because of the way the light reflects off of the vapors given off by the eucalyptus trees. One thing I would have liked to see was the Jenolan Caves, but it would have taken too long to get out there.
On the way back to Sydney, we both took naps and then stopped at Featherdale Wildlife Park to spend about an hour interacting with koalas, wallabies, and other native Australian birds and mammals. I probably enjoyed it more than Troy. It was fun getting to pet some of the animals.
Our tour guide was kind of weird and goofy too, so we weren't very impressed with him. We had to catch a ferry back into the city and we were running behind schedule so he drove pretty fast in order to make it to the ferry in time. In fact, he told us to run toward the pier so the ferry wouldn't leave us there. It was nice to be off the bus and to relax and have more room on the ferry. Sydney has a pretty extensive ferry network and so we stopped at like 10 piers before we finally made it back to the Circular Quay in the CBD. It was really cool riding the ferry underneath the Harbour Bridge and next to the Opera House. The only downside is it was incredibly windy, so windy it almost knocked me over. It was hard to take video in what was probably the heaviest wind I've ever experienced.
We were pretty hungry by the time we got back. I wanted to eat at Nando's one more time before we left Australia, so we went there for dinner and it was really good. There's actually a few Nando's in Vancouver, BC and one in Washington DC, but I've heard the one in DC is a lot different from the ones in Australia, so who knows if the ones in Vancouver are any good either. I guess we'll find out when we go there for the Olympics in 4 months.
We walked around the Queen Victoria Market and The National Gallery of Victoria a little more and then decided to take the train down to the harbour again to take some nice night photos of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. We walked around the Rocks briefly and then went back to the hotel to rest from the long day.
On Wednesday, the first order of the day was to get something to eat for breakfast, or brekkie as Australians often call it. We really liked the Asian-style pastries at Breadtop and decided to try a similar place nearby called Barby's. We walked to a nearby park to sit and eat. It was kind of cool in the morning, but our blueberry pastry was really good.
After that, we wanted to go to the Powerhouse Museum, which we had read about in several guidebooks. To get there, though, we had to navigate our way up a hill and across some elevated roads. It wasn't terribly difficult, but it wasn't as easy or pedestrian-friendly as I expected a world-class city like Sydney to be. When we got near the museum, it wasn't yet open, so we continued walking into the quiet, historic neighborhood of Ultimo. We sat at a park bench near an old hotel, enjoying the morning sunlight.
We got to the museum and walked around. It was a pretty cool museum. There were a lot of interactive scientific exhibits that were popular with the kids there. There was also a neat little exhibit about Australian inventions, including the bionic ear and Vegemite. Australia overall was a pretty environmentally conscientious place, and there was an exhibit at the museum with environmental facts and a model home with examples of ways to limit your environmental impact. Our favorite exhibit, though, was about outer space with a lot of amazing color photos of planets, galaxies, and nebulae.
Cafes in Glebe
University of Sydney
Newtown
Historic building in Kings Cross
Since we had spent most of our time in Sydney so far in the CBD and immediately surrounding, we had decided to spend Wednesday afternoon exploring some of Sydney's neighborhoods. After the museum, we hopped on the light rail tram to Jubilee Park, where we had a view of the Anzac Bridge.
From there, we found our way to Glebe Point Road, which went through the neighborhood of Glebe. It was a neat area and there were lots of cafes that we walked past. We stopped at a busy Thai restaurant that we had read about and found a place to sit and eat. After that, we walked through the University of Sydney, which is the oldest university in Australia and had some impressive historic and contemporary architecture.
Then we came to the neighborhood of Newtown, which seemed to have endless eating options. We walked along Princes Highway in Newtown for like 45 minutes and the cafes and fast food and restaurants continued on and on. We kind of wished that we hadn't already eaten, but hoped to be able to come back later. We stopped at a cafe where I had some Russian Caravan tea, which I had never seen previously in the US, but seemed to be somewhat common in Australia.
After that, we took a train to the neighborhood of King's Cross on the other side of town. That neighborhood has had a mixed past of drugs and crime, but has been cleaned up considerably and is now a somewhat bohemian area with some historic surroundings. There were more strip clubs than we'd seen anywhere else in Sydney, but otherwise it wasn't too much different from other neighborhoods. We walked to the Elizabeth Bay House, a historic home in the area, and sat at the park across the street with a peaceful view of the harbour. It had started to get windy, though, so we got up to walk.
The neighborhood of Darlinghurst was nearby so we walked south towards it. Unfortunately, it was somewhat cool and windy, and the walk wasn't particularly interesting. We did arrive at the Taylor Square area, which had lots of shopping and cafes and restaurants. It was a pretty neat area, but the public pay toilets weren't working and we were both pretty cold. We actually weren't that far away from our hotel, so we decided to walk there to warm up and figure out where to eat.
I thought I had read that the neighborhood of Paddington, which was in the same direction from the CBD as Darlinghurst, but just a little farther out, had a lot of places to eat. We figured out what bus to take and went out to take the bus there. We got off the bus at before we went too far, but we didn't see much to eat in the area. There were a lot of places to shop, and some places to eat, but even though it was only like 6:30, pretty much everything had closed. It also started to rain, but fortunately we were able to find a place to eat.
Dinner was pretty unremarkable. Afterward we caught a bus back into the city and went back to our hotel room. We were a little hungry for dessert, so we found the nearest Max Brenner and went there for the last time. It was kind of busy. We found a seat at the bar where we could watch them preparing food and we got the very rich and very good chocolate souffle.
The sun shined through our east-facing hotel window and woke us up early on our first morning in Sydney. We got up and started our day by walking a few blocks to Bread Top for dim sum / Asian-style pastries. We got an apple bun, a coconut bun, and a ham & cheese croissant, which were all good. We then walked through Hyde Park, which is a fairly large park in the heart of the city and just a couple blocks from out hotel. Then we walked by St. Mary's Cathedral, which is the large cathedral we could see from our hotel room.
We then continued walking to the Royal Botanic Gardens. The weather had been cool, but by this time the sun had come out and it felt a little warm. There was a neat part of the gardens with succulent plans from around the world. The gardens are on a small peninsula and we continued walking out to Mrs. Macquarie's point. From there, we had an awesome view of the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. There was also a seat, called Mrs. Macquarie's chair, which was carved in 1810 for the governor's wife. We had a good view of the CBD and the opera house from this area.
We walked along the water to Bennelong Point where the Sydney Opera House is. The Opera House was pretty neat. It's such a unique and interesting piece of architecture. We took a few pictures there before heading back into the gardens. There were lots of neat plants and flowers as well as a pond with ducks. There were also a lot of very large bats perched on the trees, technically they were grey-headed flying foxes, which have killed several trees since they have moved in.
By this time we had spent enough time at the park and were about ready for lunch. Again we had trouble finding anything good, so instead we ate cheaply at some food court. Our next stop was Bondi Beach, where the beach volleyball events were held during the 2000 summer Olympics in Sydney. To get there, we took the train from downtown to Bondi Junction and from there, took a bus to the beach. We were fortunate enough to have clear skies and pretty comfortable temperatures, which made the beach seem even more beautiful.
There were a pretty good amount of surfers here and other people just out enjoying themselves. And the area around the beach seemed pretty neat as well. We stopped inside somewhere to have ice cream before heading back into the city.
Sydney has a pretty good ferry system and we took a ferry from downtown to the suburb/neighborhood of Manly. It was a very scenic ride out of the city with views of the city skyline and its landmarks as well as the forested and rocky harbour shoreline. Once we arrived at Manly, we walked along the water for a while. On our way back, it started to rain, and by the time we got back to downtown Manly, it was raining pretty hard. Fortunately we had an umbrella this time, so we didn't get wet, and fortunately there were several places around to eat. We decided to stop at a pizza place, which claimed to have the best pizza in Australia. In my experience, when a place says they have the best food, they usually don't. Still, we decided to give it a try. The pizza was pretty good, but nothing too special. Pizza in Australia is a little different from American pizza. They put much less sauce on the pizza in Australia and the crust is thinner, though not really thin-crust. While we ate we could see the rain pouring down outside. We also heard thunder, which was cool since we so rarely have thunderstorms in Seattle.
After dinner, the rain had slowed down some and we decided to walk to the beach on the other side of Manly. While the beach had emptied, there was a very bright rainbow out in the ocean.
Before heading back into the city, we stopped in the grocery store to pick up some snacks for later. It was dark outside for our ferry ride back into the city and again we enjoyed the beautiful views of the Opera House and the city lit up at night.
By this time a lot of the stuff in the CBD had closed, so we went back to our hotel and went to the observation level on the 45th floor. It was a fitting way to end a day of beautiful scenery. This was possibly our best day in Sydney, as we got to see a lot of beautiful things, and had good weather overall.
After 8 full days in Melbourne, we were scheduled to fly to Sydney on Monday. Our flight was around noon, so we didn't have to wake up too early. We got up, packed all of our stuff, and got on the rain for the final time to head into the city. Adam had to go to work, but Sofia was nice enough to come along with us. We got off at Southern Cross station and went to the airport shuttle. We said goodbye to Sofia and then got on the bus for the 30 minute or so ride to the airport.
At the airport, there wasn't an express check-in and the regular check-in line was fairly long. Getting through security in Australia was really easy - I could keep my shoes, belt, and watch on and didn't have to take my laptop out of my bag or put liquids into 3 oz bottles.
We had plenty of time before our flight and figured we should eat something, so we got chicken sandwiches from a fast food chain called Oporto. We boarded our plane (a 737) and the plane took off. The TVs on the plane showed some national news, which included fairly in-depth coverage of the Samoan tsunami that had just happened. I don't ever remember getting to watch intelligent news coverage on a flight in the US (or on the ground). Then, in an even more un-American way, we each got a sandwich to eat during our hour-and-a-half flight. We each got two half-sandwiches and they were kind of interesting. One was some kind of egg sandwich and another was some kind of sandwich with chutney and rocket. Chutney is kind of like relish-flavored jelly and rocket is apparently Australia's very-misleading word for arugula, which is our misleading word for leaf.
Anyway, we landed in Sydney and our luggage showed up really quickly. The airport was on the train line, so we went to buy our tickets and fortunately there was a teller who was able to sell us the tickets we'd need for the train and for the next 5 days in Sydney. Then, we got to the train platform and the train showed up really quickly. The only tricky thing was that Sydney's trains have an upper and a lower level and carrying luggage to either one is a bit difficult. One cool thing, though, was that the seats were reversible so we could reverse our seats and face forwards and put our luggage on the backward-facing seats. It was only a couple stops to Museum station, which was pretty close to our hotel. Unfortunately it wasn't accessible for heavy items, so we had to carry our luggage up more stairs. Once we were at street level it was pretty easy to get to our hotel, though the lack of people out and about was a big change from Melbourne's constantly bustling CBD.
George Street
The Rocks
Sydney Harbour Bridge
We checked into our hotel and asked for (and got) a room with a decent view. We could see eastward to Hyde Park and St. Mary's Cathedral, though we couldn't see the water or any major landmarks. We didn't stay at the hotel for long and decided to go check out the city. Our hotel was pretty optimally located in the heart of the CBD, but after being spoiled by Melbourne's convenient tram system (and people who knew which trams to take), Sydney's lack of a tram system and our unfamiliarity with the bus system meant we'd be doing more walking. We walked north on George Street towards the water, absorbing the sights of Sydney.
Our first destination was the Rocks area of Sydney, which is one of the oldest parts of the city and is located along the water. We walked through briefly and then walked along the water, looking at the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House.
We then decided to walk on the bridge and had a bit of difficulty figuring out where to get on it. Once we found it, we decided to walk to the tower on the other side, however we saw storm clouds in the distance. The week before we arrived, Sydney was sunny with temps in the 70s, but there was a lot of rain forecast for the time we were there. We didn't have an umbrella with us and decided to press our luck and continued on to the far tower. We took plenty of pictures and enjoyed the view of the harbour. As we were walking back, though, it started to sprinkle.
By the time we made it back to the Rocks, it was raining fairly hard and we were getting pretty wet. We were looking for a place to stop and eat, but it was Australian Labour Day and we didn't find much open. So, we found a bus stop and got on the next one, assuming it would take us toward our hotel, so we could dry off and get an umbrella. The bus got us close to our hotel so we got off and went to our room to dry off.
By that time we had started to get hungry, but hadn't really seen many places to eat while we were out. We decided to walk to Darling Harbour to find food places there. There's a monorail that we could've taken between the CBD and Darling Harbour, but it's not that far to walk. Darling Harbour had a big shopping mall and a lot of upscale places to eat, along with a shopping mall food court. After walking around some, we found some mediocre Thai food to eat and then had a chocolate hot fudge sundae at Lindt, a chocolate bar place like Max Brenner. The sundae was really really good, but I'm embarrassed to say that we paid $15 for it. Darling Harbour was kind of neat, it was a harbor, obviously, and there were people there and some live music and a neat pedestrian bridge. After our time there we walked back toward the CBD and saw a bunch of stuff to the south of where we were staying. We walked around there, past a downtown mall, and some restaurants and cafes, including a really nice McDonald's (with chandeliers). That area reminded me of Melbourne's CBD. After walking through, we headed back to the hotel for the night.
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