Up first, Rose…

Whereeeee to begin. Well, firstly, if you ever fly into Sydney, do it in daylight. Confusingly the plane flys over the city and on out to sea… Leaving you wondering what the pilot had in their morning brew, but then in true joker style it does a U turn, much to my dismay as I hate how planes do turning around, especially when it involves dive bombing toward the shark infested ocean… Anyway, flying over Australia for the first time when the sun is rising is perrr-itty deece. Then the famous Sydney harbour comes into view, and you get a spectacular 5-10 seconds to spot the bridge, opera house, CBD skyscrapers and Russell Crowe’s yacht before hitting the runway. Now, landing in Aus you expect to step out into beautiful sunshine, unfiltered UV rays charging through the gap in the ozone to turn you a lovely shade of bronze, someone called Bruce should definitely have a BBQ on the go and hand you a burger and shrimp as you pass through customs while his wife Sheila pours you a beer… Obviously this didn’t happen, there was just a huge brute of a man who carefully reads your landing declaration and scans your face to detect any lies, like ticking “No soil on shoes” when potentially there may be some Thai jungle left on a pair of trainers buried deep in your backpack. Furthermore, its the Aussie winter so having come from Vietnam in 39 degree humidity to an overcast grey 18 degrees, we felt comfortably cold and a lot like we had landed in any british city – this sounds dull but actually made us very happy! No Bruce, no Sheila, no BBQ, no Fosters but…

Our chosen hostel (The Jolly Swagman) was a pleasant surprise! Set just off the main backpacker highstreet in Kings-cross, its a bright yellow building with an enormous painting of their surfing kangaroo logo, not hard to miss. What I was most excited about though was seeing Lucy Sayles for the first time in 10months… When she flew off to Aus nearly a year ago I told her I would come to see her and I don’t think she quite believed me as our travel plans were non-existent at that point, so the reality of seeing your friend of 10 years in Sydney of all places was pretty cool! I sat outside The Jolly Swagman, enjoying the nice cool air temperature, eagerly waiting for her transfer to arrive. Up pulled a shuttle bus and I sprinted over, far to excitedly for a 23yr old, off hopped a blonde german girl andddd… No one else, “Oh. Is it just you?” I asked before realising how rude that sounded, quickly explained myself and then carried her bag to reception to apologise. About an hour later a second shuttle pulled up and feeling embarrassed I stayed sat on my bench, tentatively waiting to see who would get off. Of course it was Lucy and we had the least dramatic reunion of all time. End of boring story.

So theres two paragraphs covering just our first 3hrs or so of 6 days in Sydney, if that gives you any clue as to how this post may continue in length I would maybe suggest pausing to go grab a cup of tea now. Speaking of tea, we immediately delighted in being able to purchase western brand tea bags and milk and make ourselves a brew – something near impossible in SEA. Also, anytime someone compliments my scarf I do this awwwwful “gap yaaar” thing of “thanks, I got it in Hoi An in Vietnam, we were just there before Australia” SHUT UP AND JUST SAY THANKS, ROSE. So I will be putting a stop to that soon I hope. Anyone who doesn’t know what I’m on about please refer to youtube and I solemnly promise to behave in that manner for as little time as possible when we return ;).

Being a Sydney veteran we gave Lucy the map and left navigation in her hands, spending our first full day exploring all the famous city landmarks on foot. The central area with all the top spots is surprisingly small, walking was for sure the best option to see it all. We strolled around the coast line past Maquari’s chair and kind of out of the blue the Opera house and Harbour Bridge appeared around the corner… First stop for tonnes of photos and selfies, obvs.

The opera house is as awesome to see as you expect, it looked a little smaller than expected but only because the bridge behind it is SO huge. More to come on that later as we saw these two icons every day in Sydney…

The city is quite well renowned for shopping and although we obviously weren’t about to go on a spree in all the beautiful designer stores, we did HAVE to go into some of Australia’s Primark/NewLook equivalents to search for jumpers. We knew Aus would be somewhat chillier than S.E.A and were semi prepared for this but our next stop is New Zealand which will be considerably colder/snowy, so we figured we would get a head start in stocking up for that… Have I sufficiently excused us?

The following day we took a ferry to the northern suburb of Manly. This is a must do as you get the rear view of the opera house and see all of the Sydney outer suburbs from the water. A pretty little seaside town, I could say Manly isn’t too dissimilar to Torbay, but actually other than being beside the sea and plagued with tacky tourist shops they are not the same at all. Manly is your classic chilled out Aussie town where I’m almost certain they don’t even bother learning the word “stress”, plus of course they have a world famous surfing beach… So why I’ve mentioned Torbay in the same paragraph as Manly is beyond me. We attempted to navigate our way along a beautiful coastal walk, got a bit lost and at one point started making our own path through some woods; this happens almost any time I leave Lucy in charge of navigation so I guess we had it coming 😉 “I know the way home from Truro” may ring a bell in some of your minds (she doesn’t). On the walk we came across some old gun emplacements, one of which was a bit of a maze and if we’re honest was kind of scary, not quite like battery gardens or the lower day mark, these were downright creepy. I believe at one point I made the others sprint back to the path because as I went round a corner and looked to my right there was a flight of steps leading to a Scraesdon-esk tunnel of darkness, I’ll allow Jade to describe my arm flapping/facial expression… that was as far as we got exploring those.

Obviously we also had to dedicate a day to Bondi beach. Unfortunately for Jade and Lucy, fans of Bondi Rescue, no one in the water had any drowning incidents or shark attacks, but waaaay out to sea we did spot a big whale! Being winter time the town and beach were very quiet, no human sardine situations on the sand, which is so soft it feels like flour. Our only companions on the beach were the swarms of surfers, making it look easy in the clear turquoise Ocean – a couple of token Aussie long-haired surfer dudes made us smile, if you’re going to live up to a stereotype then an Aussie surfer is a pretty decent cliche to be! Although we enjoyed having our accommodation in the city there are also tonnes of hostels in Bondi and if it was summer time this would definitely be the place to be.

Our hostel put on loads of events/meals including £2.50 fish and chips, free BBQ, $5 pizza in a cocktail bar, various bar crawls etc so the fear everyone instilled in us about Aus being uber expensive turned out not to be so horrifying and because we saved money walking everywhere we all indulged in A LOT of coffee and food during our time in Sydney – Kings-Cross being a haven of cheap but delicious eateries. If you’re in the area then we highly recommend food and coffee at The 5 Boroughs. Also we entered the Jolly Swagman world cup sweepstake… Pulled the USA on our first draw, so obviously chose to pick again and got Argentina, so if I start to publicise my support for them, no I’m not part Argentinian I just have $150 and a free nights accommodation riding on them reaching at least the quarter finals.

Jade and I extended our Sydney stay by a few days to join Lucy and her Aussie Grandad, Pa, in a venture to an opera house concert (see selfies on Facebook). This was delightful, we had our first taste of Australian steak, which was probably the best steak I’ve ever had and saw the Sydney Symphony Orchestra perform Beethoven’s concerto’s 3 and 4… Just to clarify, the Opera house doesn’t do vegas style dinner shows, these two events occurred at separate times in separate venues. Theres not many words to really describe the performance, I think being a tourist and relatively inexperienced in this kind if concert made the whole thing more amazing so I’ll just use the word Awesome, in its most literal sense. Plus we had champagne at half time (I’m joking, I know its called an interval) so whats not to like? On a backpackers budget and purchasing last minute, we had opted for the cheapest seats, which turned out to be some of the most popular because you view the conductor rather than the orchestra. This cost the equivilent of £20, far less than we expected and well worth it, so if you’re in Sydney on a budget don’t rule out a real visit to the Opera House without researching the prices, you may also get a pleasant surprise.

Whilst in Sydney we also planned out and booked in the rest of our time in Aus. Next stop is down south to chilly Melbourne (we’re here now) then a 3.5hr flight up to Cairns, which should be more typical Aussie sunshine and warmth. From Cairns we make a 23 day trip back down to Sydney, stopping off at Magnetic Island, Airlie and the Whitsundays, Fraser Island, Brisbane, Surfers Paradise, Byron Bay and then back to Sydney. We’re leaving out the outback and the west coast, purely due to time constraints and Aus being bloody enormous, for next time 😉

We have now given up with the gallery attached to this website, so please continue to view photos on Facebook and Instagram! Jade is now going to add some extra details… If she ever stops napping.

JADES BIT….(i’m awake!)

SO sorry for falling behind with this – part laziness/tragic wifi in Aus/busy traveling the east coast. All that sorta stuff.

Well, basically I love Sydney. BRB, just moving there.

It was always sunny but a little bit cold which was sooo ideal after sweating half the water content of your body out everyday in Asia. We walked around loads and enjoyed the simple grid system going on for once, with some familiar names…swear i’ve heard of Hyde Park and Oxford Street before. And WHAT a novelty to be wearing leggings and a jumper again! Although, saying that, I had to (yes, had to) do some emergency shopping for normal clothes. This is the point when I realised that Aussies are really friendly and always ask “hey how ya going?”…ummmm I’m ‘going’ well thanks…? Four weeks later and I still feel like a numpty answering that question. Damn those Australians and their manners causing me first world problems.

I was SO excited about going to Bondi after having a weird phase a few years ago of being obsessed with Bondi Rescue. We walked from Bronte to Tamarama then onto Bondi….OMGGG IT WAS REAL AND NOT ON TV!! The lifeguard tower was real, the rescue boards were real, the little buggy thing was real, the skate park was there and the surfers were out. I loved the beach and was so happy to finally be there. Then, to top it off, I saw Harries who has always been my favourite lifeguard on Bondi Resue. He was buying himself a juice, obvs on a short break from saving lives n’ that. (Sorry about this weird fan-girl moment i’m having here.)

Rose has pretty much covered all the day to day stuff, meeting up with Lucy and our trips out as a little trio, and then of course with Pa later on. So, that leaves me to let you knew about my gammy foot – common theme within this blog are our feet issues and we know you LOVE to read about them! Basically, I had the smallest cut you’ve ever seen on my heel which decided to become diseased and, as a result, give me one massive kankle. All of a sudden walking wasn’t going too well which was far from ideal – Dr. Aus said I had a spreading tissue infection (gross), gave me some magic tablets to make it better-er, told me to keep it elevated and warned me that flying wouldn’t be the best idea. So nurse Harvey got lairy whenever my leg wasn’t up on a chair, I huffed like a small child because I wanted to do the opposite of what I’d been told, and we proceeded to get on a flight to Melbourne a few days later….eeeek.

The kankle finally deflated after a week, hooooorah! I deserve some Uggs now, yeh? Good.

Sydney you were amazing and I can’t wait to go back!

Jade x