Exploring Sydney

We have spent 5 days in Sydney and are slowly trying to figure out what we will be doing next and also trying to see as much of the city as we can. We are staying in a short term backpackers hostel with suspicious air quality and a handi bathroom stall. We can also hear every plane enter and leave Sydney we are so close to the airport. It’s not ideal but it is close to a great park, shopping mall and transit down town is 30 minutes.

To start we spent a day at orientation with our travel organization, opened a bank account and got our phone set up. We have internet included in our room - much better quality than in NZ so this is quite the treat.

 

Tiles cover the entire exterior of the Opera House.

 

When you are downtown it doesn’t take long to be drawn like moths to a flame towards the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge. They are both jaw dropping architectural specimens. In the shadow of the Harbour Bridge lies a cool restaurant and club district called The Rocks where you can find the Aussie version of Wildfire. Jess is considering just wearing her uniform from the NZ Wildfire and jumping in until a few tips go her way.

We purchased multi transit tickets which allow us to use the bus, train and ferry as much as we like for a week. We have been able to cover a lot of ground this way. One of the furthest destinations by ferry is Manly Beach – Sydney’s second most popular beach. We decided to head over and see what all the fuss was about. We used the ferry ride as our free harbour tour and made it to Manly in half an hour. The ferry holds almost 900 people so we waited for 30 minutes before we were even on board.

The beach wasn’t crowded and we walked through a pretty cool market on the way there. Even though it is just the beginning of spring we thought it was beautiful and many people were surfing or at least trying to catch a wave.

  

Close to the Harbour Bridge and Opera House is the Contemporary Art Museum and Botanical Gardens. The museum had some interesting/weird exhibits, while the gardens were a very peaceful place to be in the center of the busy city. We were surprised to see a couple of wild cockatoo and various other wild parrots flying around. So far we have not seen any spiders, crocodiles, or sharks. We have barely even seen an Aussie!

 

 Some interesting art exhibits...

 

Jeff is very excited to be in OZ

 

When we aren’t sight seeing, we spend time job hunting/interviewing and searching on Gumtree for reasonable accommodation. Gumtree is their online search site for everything. We definitely feel that we could make Sydney our short term home, but we are also aware of how big the country is and we want to see it all. We are meeting up with some friends from NZ this weekend, and will give ourselves some more time to sort it all out.