East Coast Travels - Sydney 3

To view my other Sydney posts, click here!

Day 3: On the third day we woke up nice and early again and took the train to Bondi Beach. Bondi Beach is Sydney’s most famous beach. We took the train from Central Station to Bondi Junction from platform 24. The train goes pretty often so it’s very convenient. We only paid $10 for two return tickets and the train took about 15 minutes. From Bondi Junction we took bus 333 to the beach. The station is very easy to navigate, and there are tons of signs showing how to go to the beach. We bought a prepaid ticket which cost us $2.30 each for a single ticket. The beach is really beautiful, the beach is in a bay surrounded by grassy areas and the promenade. The sand was beautifully white and the ocean was a perfect blue, and was quite a nice temperature. We didn’t go for a swim, but did walk through the water. There were quite a few surfers which really emphasized the Australian beach.

After sitting on the beach we walked along the promenade, and had some lunch of the grass surrounding the beach. We then went back into the city, got changed, and walked to the Harbour Bridge for our Bridge Climb!! Way back when we first decided to go to Australia, I made a list of all the things I want to see and do while being here, and the Harbour Climb was on that list! It was extremely exciting to do it for real! We got the evening climb as it was slightly cheaper at $198 per person. We also ordered two photos for $30.

The bridge climb was incredible!! It was a 3.5 hour experience. We booked it for 16.25 and only started the climb half an hour later. First you have to sign a declaration, then you’re taken into the next room and everyone introduces themselves and you kind of get to know who you’re walking with. Then you get your very snazzy outfit. After putting that on you can put all your valuables in little lockers and you walk through a metal detector. That’s followed by strapping into your gear, getting a quick induction on how that works, and then climbing up some incredibly steep stairs to see if everyone is able to climb them. You then get a headset and radio for the tour, you collect a handkerchief, a hat, a rain jacket etc and then you’re finally ready to get going!

The first part and the last part are actually the scariest. We started off underneath the bridge and walked underneath the cars and trains. Every time a train went by the whole bridge would shake. At first you can’t look directly down, but after a while you can, and it’s terrifying. Every now and then the group would stop and the guide would point things out to us, standing still was even scarier than walking! We then went up the steepest stairs I’ve ever seen. This was terrifying. This was even worse than walking underneath the road and train. And the stairs just kept going up and higher!! Once we were up those stairs and reached the actual arch, everything was so much better! There wasn’t any shaking or scary noises or anything. This is where I really started to appreciate the view. Looking at the Opera House and back towards the CBD was incredible and such an unreal site. We were all the way at the back of the group of 14, so there was no one behind us! There were quite a few photo stops and only being able to choose 1 was going to be tricky. We walked all the way up the arch to the middle of the bridge. This is where we had 5 minutes to just stop and stare and be amazed. We then took a group photo, which everyone gets for free! Now this part was pretty terrifying too... We walked from one edge of the bridge to the other side. We couldn’t look directly down, but the path was really thin so you could see the road and the cars driving way down underneath us. I’m not particularly scared of heights, but if I fell, I doubt the strap I was connected to would really catch me... Once we were on the other side and walking back down we had a beautiful view back of the city. Sydney is just beautiful, especially from the top of the Harbour Bridge!! We then had to climb back down the super steep stairs. I would say going down was worse than going up because this time we were actually directly next to the train rails. As I was (very very slowly) trying to make my way down, a train when by and made everything shake!!! After that though it was an easy walk back to the building.

When you arrive back everything goes very smoothly. We went in, took off all our gear, received a certificate and collected our CD of photos. In the end we couldn’t choose between just two photos, so we paid a little extra to receive all of our photos. I’m so glad we did! We could then choose which photos we wanted to post directly to Facebook, we choose three of our favourite photos and received a receipt which we could use for a machine in the next room - scan in the receipt, fill in Facebook details, write a status and post! We don’t have internet in our hotel and don’t have anything to put a CD in, so we wouldn’t have been able to see our photos until we’re back in the UK. Such a great service that we could put it on Facebook immediately!!

All in all the Bridge Climb was such a fantastic experience, it was scary, but definitely not too scary, and I would highly recommend it. After the climb we walked back through Elizabeth Street and George Street back to our hotel and had some quick food along the way.

Sydney has been such an amazing and exciting place to be! I fell in love with it from the start. We have seen so much in such a short amount of time. It would have been nice to stay longer, but we have crammed in so much that I feel it’s fine to move on.

The next top is Port Macquarie, where we’ll only be staying for a very short 24 hours. Our bus leaves Sydney at 7am and we arrive at 14.20. It’s a very long first ride, but I’m really excited to get going.

East Coast Travels - Sydney 2

Click here to view my other Sydney posts.

Day two: We woke up pretty early, had some breakfast at a cafe next to the hotel and at about 10 decided to start out day in the city. We found a leaflet for a free city tour, but decided we wanted to walk around at our own pace, so we noted down all the stops of the tour and walked it ourselves. We started off walking to Town Hall, a beautiful building that kind of reminds me of a way more beautiful Guildhall in Portsmouth. Next to town hall is also St Andrew Cathedral.

The day before we saw someone walking with a Victoria’s Secret bag. I am in love with Victoria’s Secret, but thought the only one in Australia was in the airport (which I briefly saw, but everyone wanted to collect their luggage..). Anyway after google-ing it, I found that there was a store in the Queen Victoria Building, next to Town Hall. The Queen Victoria Building is the most posh shopping centre I’ve ever seen. It’s a beautiful building, but you wouldn’t think it’s a shopping centre (photo right)!

After a stroll through, we went to Westfield and the Sydney Tower Eye. We didn’t go up, but took some great photos of the weird looking tower. There was also a really lovely shopping street in that area, Pitt’s Street Mall. It’s a street where no cars are allowed, so it’s a little quieter than the shops of George Street. From there we walked towards Hyde Park - Sydney isn’t very original with its names, there is Hyde Park, Paddington, Kings Cross....

On our way to Hyde Park we walked past the cutest and probably my favourite street in Sydney, it was the Sydney Arcade. It’s just off of Pitt’s Street Mall.

At the fountain in Hyde Park you can get some great views back at the city through the trees. It’s a great location to just sit in the sun and relax before going back to the busy streets. Here we kind of went back on ourselves, and I’m sure there is a better order of doing things, but we walked all the way down Hyde Park to the Anzac War Memorial.

This is a beautiful building. It’s a lot more modern looking than the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne. There was also water in front of the building, which makes some great reflection photos.

We then walked back to the fountain in Hyde Park and continued going up on Macquarie Street. This goes past the Hyde Park Barracks, the Sydney Hospital, The New South Whales Parliament and the State Library, before reaching the Botanic Gardens.

The Royal Botanic Gardens are just a breathe of fresh air. It doesn’t feel like you’re in the city at all! It’s very quiet and relaxing and strange to stand in the middle of this huge beautiful park and look back to see the Sydney skyline. We had some lunch in the gardens, which only cost us $14 each, and then walked all the way up to Mrs Macquarie’s Point. From Mrs Macquarie’s Point you have a beautiful view of the Opera House with the Harbour bridge in the background, I shot a quick time lapse there, and from there we walked all the way along the Farm Cove to the Sydney Opera House.

The Opera House is very different close up from how I imagined it would be. From far it looks like one building, but when you’re close to it, it looks like separate buildings. It’s very weird. I have heard from a lot of people that it isn’t worth coming up close to the Opera House because it’s a bit underwhelming, but I thought it was great to see it up close and see a completely different angle.

After that we went back up through George Street, looked at a few lanes before going back to our hotel, The lane way in the photo is Strand Arcade. We had some dinner in China Town, which is probably the cheapest place in Sydney to buy food.

East Coast Travels - Sydney 1

30th April - 3rd of May

Click here to view the other Sydney posts. 

We have been in Melbourne for long enough, it’s time to see some more of Australia, so we decided to travel up the East Coast of Australia! We start off by flying to Sydney, and from Sydney use the Greyhound to travel all the way up to Cairns. We’re taking a month to do it, and on our way back to the UK we’re flying via Tokyo and staying there for 5 days.

Day one: Our flight to Sydney was only $29!! That was without extra luggage and the booking fee, but it’s still incredibly cheap. We booked it during the Boxing day sale with Jetstar. We flew from Avalon airport (in Melbourne), which is the smallest airport I’ve ever seen. We took Sita Coaches to get there, it cost us $22 for a single ticket and took about an hour to get there. The flight was just over an hour. We flew over Melbourne CBD so that was a great goodbye. We arrived in Sydney at around 5, took the train from the airport to Central Station (way overpriced, it cost us $32 for a 10 min ride!!) and made it to our Hotel - all in about 30 minutes!!

We’re staying at Aaron’s Hotel in Chinatown. It’s a great location, it’s about 5 minutes away from Central Station and a 30 minute walk to the Harbour Bridge right through the city. The hotel itself though.... not so great. It kind of reminds me of what a private room in a youth hostel would be like. Very small, smells a bit weird, and... cockroaches. Other than that, it’s ok, just a place to sleep!

We dropped off all our stuff in our hotel room and went for a walk! We landed at sunset, so our first impression of the city was at night, during rush hour. It was incredibly busy everywhere, but immediately loved Sydney. It’s such a huge city compared to Melbourne. Walking though the busy streets and finally seeing the Harbour Bridge and Opera House hidden between the skyscrapers was such a reward! It was amazing to see those two buildings in real life. We walked all the way up George Street until we got the The Rocks. We had an amazing view of the Opera House to one side and the Harbour Bridge to the other. We walked around The Rocks and back through the City to our hotel.