East Side Story

So leaving Middle Earth, we returned to real life with a flight to Sydney (not without a Lord of the Rings themed safety demo video on the Air New Zealand flight we took – hilarious).

Straight from the plane we navigated the subway and bus transport system to an arranged meeting point on the shore of a park that looked across to Sydney’s central banking district and its famous harbour bridge. We were staying with a friend, Vanessa, whom we met in a Tibetan homestay in Juizhaigou National Park, China. Vanessa is quite the traveller herself and also is a keen ‘host’ as part of the world wide couch-surfing network, so for her it was perfectly normal to have 2 people she hardly knew staying with her… at her cousins, as she didn’t have a home herself at the time (seriously we are just scratching the surface of this girl’s life, it’s incredible, but that’s another story).

So we met her (and the rambling group she was with) for a chillax (on an unseasonal hot day for Sydney) before wandering down the costal track for a better vantage point of the sunset over Sydney. It must be noted we still had our 3 months of travelling rucksacks and didn’t realise that we would be walking even further (with steep incline/declines) but it was certainly an amusing and bemusing experience none-the-less, and was worth it for the views over the water to the city as it lit up at dusk.

On the Sunday (we arrived on the Saturday) after mass at a local church with a memorable amusing Priest, me and Tanya headed into the city to meet up with a friend of mine, whom I met the previous year in Spain (as if this part of our trip didn’t sound random enough already). Before we did so, I half guided Tanya (with map prompts) to Hilary’s Boat Harbour in search of the best hot chocolate I ever had, since I’d been to Sydney in 2008 and vaguely remembered my way around. We eventually found the place (a Lindt chocolate shop/café) and naturally I had to have another hot chocolate and yes it was just as good as I remembered, win! We then wandered through Chinatown (which was rather similar to the cities of China we visited; a distinct smell, dirty and lots of restaurants) and Paddy’s Market (essentially a massive indoor stall network selling pretty much everything).

Upon finally meeting my friend, Veronica, and her brother, we headed to a pretty good replica of a traditional English pub, aptly named The Shakespeare, for good quality, low cost food… oh how I’ve missed the pub culture of Britain. We then wandered through the botanical gardens to meet up with Vanessa at the famous Sydney Opera House.

The other significant sightseeing we managed on our whirlwind 4 day visit to Sydney included; St Mary’s Cathedral, a seasonal Swarovski crystal adorned Christmas tree in the Queen Victoria Building (a quaint mall, which amongst its boutique shops has a stained glass sliding door entrance to the lavatories), eating pancakes at Pancakes on the Rocks (a harbour on the river next to the Sydney Bridge), walking across aforementioned bridge (on the ground level, not the paid route along the top), a meander through Luna Park; an 1930’s restored theme park (with a very strange clown faced entrance) and went for a run around some of the northern districts of Sydney (continuing our keep fit initiative we started in Singapore).

A view from (under) the bridge 

 

If you’re interesting in couch-surfing then see the website below (but remember - be safe): https://www.couchsurfing.org