We chugged into Sydney Central Station at 2 minutes to 7 on the morning of the 18th December. We packed up our stuff and rolled, bleary eyed, off the train and straight into rush hour. Well, rush hour by Australian standards anyway. Looking like we had spent a night on the streets amongst all the suited and booted on their way to work, we stumbled onto the next train out to the suburbs where we would meet Elliott and collect the keys. Elliott and Lydia had moved to Sydney around 8 months ago when our trip was still just a pipe-dream. Getting the opportunity to come and visit them was pretty exciting.
After some big hugs and a brief explanation of where everything was in the flat, Ell jumped on the train and went off on his way to work. He had informed us that they had planned to go out for dinner that evening, which I then promptly followed up with a text to check that we were invited… our ability to read social queues had significantly dropped in the last 2 months. We wandered off in what we hoped was the general direction of the flat, stopping as soon as we stumbled across a cafe, all hopes for a cheap breakfast out of the window. Once we had had our fill of delicious, but pricey, hipster breakfast food we decided we really should get to their place, Ell had been texting me quite concerned that we hadn’t yet managed to get inside.
Once we had actually made it across the threshold, we looked around and realised that we couldn’t remember the last time we had been in an actual house. It was so weird to think that for the past 2 months we had mostly been in hotel rooms, and often in hostels. Here there was a sofa! And a TV with Netflix and Prime and iPlayer that other people weren’t already laying all over the place watching absolute nonsense. We did what anyone else would do in our situation, got in our PJs, made ourselves some HUGE cups of Yorkshire tea and put on Elf.
Now, I know that we should have been super psyched to get out and see Sydney but we also were just really enjoying the novelty of our current location. It was also like 9 in the morning so we didn’t feel too guilty. We worked our way through 2 Christmas films and had long, luxurious showers with no one else’s hair clogging the drain and trailing up the walls and gradually got ourselves back to a slightly human state. At around 1:30 we were feeling fully restored and so we decided to head out and check out a bit of the city before we were off to meet our hosts for dinner.
Lydia had left us a list of touristy activities to check out on the fridge, first option was to catch the ferry into town, this was a great introduction to Sydney as the views of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera house provided from the deck are pretty much unbeatable. It was also an absolutely beautiful day, which was much appreciated after our chilly few days in Melbourne. Transport in Sydney is also very easy to navigate, you can just use your contactless payment card for pretty much everything.
We spent a few hours exploring the harbour front, from getting up close and personal with the Sydney Opera House (I did not realise the whole thing actually has a tiled effect!), wandering through the Botanical Gardens and finally, after a good amount of searching for the start, crossing the Sydney Harbour bridge on foot. This was punctuated with a choice selection of sushi to stave off the hunger pains before dinner. (Sushi in Australia is amazing, by the way, far superior to anything we had in Japan, and probably on par with several decent London restaurants.)
Once on the other side of the river, we decided to check out the local Luna Park. This is a Southend’s Adventure Island style theme park that is mostly aimed at kids but, lets face it, Martin and I are nothing if not giant children at heart. Plus we got to wander past the old Olympic Swimming Pool which seems to have transformed itself into an upmarket spa and restaurant whilst still keeping the old pool open. I don’t think I will ever stop loving the smell of chlorine as it reminds me strongly of my childhood. (I was an avid swimmer, nothing weird or child laboury).
The inside of the park, much like Southend’s Adventure Playground, was a bit run down and sparse on the rides. As we were still being cheap, and honesty at this point, a bit lacklustre, we decided to not pay to go on anything and so instead became the weirdos wandering dejectedly around a park full of screaming children and their fed up looking parents. We did use the loos though, so at least we gave them some custom, of sorts. On our way out we found an amazing photo spot, so we took full advantage, set up the selfie stick and the tripod and snapped away.
It was time for us to go and meet Elliott and Lydia for dinner, they had recommend a place in town, which they claimed was one of their favourite restaurants and, amazingly, where they received 50% off food AND drink through an app called EatClub (highly recommend this if you are going anywhere near Australia). It was far fancier than anything we had had since Japan so we were feeling a little self conscious. Luckily the waiting staff didn’t think we looked too shabby and showed us to our table.
On recommendations from our hosts, we had a start of pork belly and mains including roast duck and gnocchi, and we are pleased to announce that all the food was exquisite. We even shared a couple of bottles of wine and the evening flowed very pleasantly. It was so good to catch up with two friends who we hadn’t seen for months and to grill them on their lives in Sydney to try and ascertain whether or not it was a lifestyle that would suit us (turns out, it would). I can’t remember the name of this place right now but I will look it up when I get round to writing up itineraries because I couldn’t recommend it enough.
The next day we decided to get out of the city for a bit and get some movement back into our legs. We caught a train and a bus out to the famous Bondi Beach with the aim of walking the 8km coastal road from here to Coogee (lol, yup). Our plans were rather stalled, however, when we realised that the reason it was so dingy outside wasn’t because we had beaten the sun in arriving in Sydney, or because a storm was on its way. It was, in fact, to do with the massive bush fires that were raging mere miles from the borders of the city. On our train into the city from Melbourne, we had come pretty close to some of the fire locations, and honestly the smell of smoke had made it feel like it was in the carriage with us, but we hadn’t given the flames much thought since then.
Not wanting to risk being outside for too long, given my asthma and, to be fair, both of our general health’s, we decided to pop into the local Westfield and get some lunch. Being back in Western countries has been hard for me because most of the time all I want to do is shop, especially as they have a lot of cool shops that we don’t have back home. After my little OTT shopping spree in Melbourne, however, I had to stop myself from even glancing inside the sparkly, shiny, tempting windows.
This is what it looked like outside at 2pm.
We eventually decided that, health risks aside, we couldn’t spend the day inside a shopping centre with a food court barely distinguishable from that of Stratford. We jumped on a bus and got on our way to Bondi.
Bondi, as it turns out, is a pretty cool place. It’s exactly what I expect an Australian seaside town to look like, full of cool, thin surfer chicks and far-out surfer dudes. There are also families and big groups of tourists there. Nobody else seemed to have the same qualms about the smokey air as us and they were all out enjoying the lack of sun.
The walk, as I previously mentioned, is along a coastal path. What I have not mentioned, however, is how bloody windy the route was for the majority of it. We were obviously dressed in our beach gear, shorts and vest tops, but given the ash cloud blocking out the sun’s warmth and the wind pelting us as if it were trying to knock us into the sea, we should’ve reconsidered our attire. Never-the-less, it offered some great views, both of the scenery, landscapes and of people being pros at surfing and making us very jealous. In a few short hours we had taken some excellent shots, and even given Martin a chance to exercise his Photoshop skills.
Eventually we made it to Coogee and sat down for a well deserved ice-cream. Elliott and Lydia had kindly picked us up some pizza for dinner so we made our way towards the tram station to head home and spend the evening with them. As it turns out, the tram had only opened 2 days before and, despite being massive overpriced and delayed it was shiny and very comfortable, if not the fastest service we’ve ever been on.
The following day was a Friday so we treated ourselves to a cheeky little lie in and then headed into the city. This was to be the first day that we had been apart for any considerable length of time as Martin was planning on meeting some colleagues from work. I was technically invited but there were extra security checks required if I were to actually visit the offices so I took one for the team and decided to go and explore the Christmas Markets that Sydney had to offer.
Turns out that there wasn’t much to them, there was some mulled wine and mulled cider but in this 34 degree heat I just couldn’t bring myself to buy a cup, also Australia’s drinking laws are pretty strict so, although you purchased this beverage from a street vendor, you couldn’t actually leave the vicinity of their cart until you had finished. I do wish I had taken a picture of their snow street however, because seeing it snow in the middle of an Australian summer was something quite special. I finished off my afternoon by taking a walk along the harbour and down to Barangaroo Reserve, a man-made nature reserve in the heart of Sydney.
It was getting late so I started to make my way back to Rhodes to get ready for the barbecue that Ell and Lyd were hosting for us that evening. I stopped off on the way to stock up on the all important halloumi when I received a text from Elliott informing me that he had taken the opportunity to go home early on his last working day for the year but forgotten that I actually have his keys so he was sitting on a bench outside his flat awaiting my arrival. By the time I had actually made it to the flat, he was mysteriously gone. Turns out, he had realised that he had forgotten to pick up some other sundries for our evening and he had popped down the road to rectify the situation.
Of course we were having too much fun to take any pictures, so you’ll have to take my word for it.
With the BBQ in full swing and the Prosecco flowing, talk turned to our upcoming trips to New Zealand. Panic began to set in once again when we realised that these two were 10,000 times more prepared for their 2 week loop of the South Island than we were for our 1 month tour of the entire country!! This is one of the problems with travelling. Before we set off we didn’t want to plan too much, we told ourselves that we would plan in our ‘downtime’. Hilarious. Any downtime we have had has been devoted to keeping these diaries and genuinely recuperating from the non-stop activities that we been going through all day every day. Whilst I was berating myself with this internal monologue, Lydia had moved onto an amusing story of trying to obtain her Electronic Travel Approval to actually get into the country. As it turns out, she had accidentally gone through one of this scam ‘we will help you to apply for your ETA for 4 times the price’ websites.
We were all sat there chuckling away at her poor misfortune when I had a sudden thought. I immediately jumped onto WhatsApp and, through my Prosecco haze, typed out the fateful message: I hope everyone has their visas for New Zealand. I was met with silence for a few minutes, then followed the message that I knew would come, even though I really hoped it wouldn’t: “What visa?!” I hurriedly sent over the correct link to the application process and got on with drinking my wine, I had done all I could do.
With Elliott and Lydia leaving at 5am to catch their flight to Christchurch, the night drew to a close. We gave them big hugs goodbye and wished them luck on their travels. We then also got up at 5am to wish them farewell again, as seems only fair when they’ve given you use of the house they won’t even be in for half of your stay. After they had left I went back to bed to snooze and left Martin on the sofa playing Pokemon.
When I eventually manager to drag myself out of bed, we got sports geared up, grabbed the bikes and went off to explore the Olympic Park. The whole area of Rhodes reminded us a lot of the Stratford Olympic Village. The athletes accomodation had been turned into flats and added to 100 times over. There were still some pretty good cycle trails around the the river and the old harbour though so it was well worth the jaunt. The heat was almost intolerable the second we stopped, but we found that as long as we kept the bikes moving, the breeze was enough to keep us cool.
This afternoon we had arranged to meet one of Martin’s friends from school who had been living out in Sydney for 5 years. They hadn’t spoken in a long time and martin had got in contact on the off chance that he’d fancy meeting for a beer. To be honest, we weren’t sure how this meeting was going to go and we had even come up with a contingency plan as to what we were going to say to escape if things got too awkward (we decided on dinner reservations with our hosts, who, as you just read, were not actually in the country anymore).
Within 5 minutes of meeting Chris, we knew this was not going to be an issue. He took us to a pub that sold pints (not just schooners!!), got a round in and dived straight into the conversation. After a little while his partner, Nathan, also made an appearance and the 4 of us got down to some serious drinking. There was a lot to catch up on from over the last 10 years and with the ciders and conversation flowing, we were all having a great time. We were just starting to think about heading off for dinner when we were invited to come on a night out. We hadn’t had much opportunity to experience Australia’s nightlife so we couldn’t resist. Especially when the offer of $20 (£10) entry plus an hour of all you can drink was on the table!!
We headed back to Chris and Nathan’s very central flat for some more booze and some Domino’s to line the stomach and then we were off to another house for a miniature house party. After finishing our bottle of gin, it was time to head over to the club. It turns out that we had also somehow bagged queue jump for the night and so managed to walk straight in. We went directly to the bar to make the most of our hour of free drinks. With several cocktails in hand we headed to the dance floor. The club was absolutely brilliant. There were 3 rooms playing different music, from cheesey to electronic, there were drag queens performing in every room and there were even free sweets handed out all over the place.
At around 2am we decided to call it a night. We weren’t really sure how to get back to the flat at this this time so Martin flagged a taxi. Unfortunately we didn’t have quite enough cash so we had to get dropped off down the road from the flat. Or what we thought was down the road. This turned into a 30 minute walk, by the end of which our drunken merriment had worn off and we were both thoroughly grumpy. As soon as we got into the flat I jumped into the bed. I needed sleep so badly that I fell asleep almost immediately.
The next morning was rough. When it became clear that no amount of tea was going to cure our hangovers, the only option that was left available to us was, once again, Domino’s. We sat in our PJs watching Netflix and waited for our pizza to come and save us. Once we had eaten our fill, and drank some more tea, we got down to the arduoius task of packing. Although, at this point we were pretty excited because we had just realised that this was the last time for a month that we would need to pack our backpacks and lug them around. In New Zealand we would have the van!!