My week in Sydney (well six days, five nights) was wonderful!! I spent three nights at the Base hostel downtown, which was pretty good (clean at least, and in a great location, down the street from the Town Hall train station, close to The Rocks, Harbour Bridge and Darling Harbour -- and a Woolworth's grocery store) except that the staff was pretty lame and they charge for everything! $8 for laundry (so I didn't do it) and $6 to store my luggage for the day when I checked out on Friday morning at 10am (the Base hostels in Brisbane store it for free). Of course there was also the matter of my stolen Reef flip flops. :( They were never returned and housekeeping didn't find them in the room so someone took them and is probably wearing them right now and thinking how comfortable they are. Such a bummer. I wore my running shoes all weekend (twice to the beach haha) and then yesterday I finally decided I needed a second pair of shoes. I found a really comfortable pair of Reefs and paid SEVENTY DOLLARS for them. :/ There was another pair for $50 but they had a much thinner sole and they didn't seem like they'd be as good for long walks. I figured $50 was already waaaayyy too much to pay for flip flops, so I might as well just pay the extra $20 and get a really good pair. Ugh. At least there wasn't tax on top of that :/ I just hope no one steals these ones. The next time I stay in a hostel (Thursday night in St. Kilda, near Melbourne) I'm not letting them out of my sight! Anyways, back to the reasons I liked Sydney. Actually, I LOVED it! The beaches are gorgeous (see last blog for pics), there are several awesome walks (I did four really cool ones), museums (I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art, which was okay as a museum and excellent as a place to hide from the rain for two hours, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales,
which was awesome -- I went there yesterday for about an hour but I could have spent several hours there if I had more time), beautiful gardens (the Royal Botanic Gardens,
Hyde Park,
and a couple others that I didn't make it to this time) and of course all the famous stuff like the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. I didn't actually go to the Opera House OR the Harbour Bridge (well I walked under it and up some stairs to the bridge level but that's it) but I did look at them and take pictures.
I planned on paying $10 to climb 200 stairs up to the "pylon lookout" at the bridge, but the day I wanted to do that it was raining and there was thunder and lightning so I decided it probably wasn't a good idea and went to the museum instead. I never made it back, but oh well -- I saved ten bucks. :) I made a few new friends in Sydney: a couple nice boys at the hostel (one very sweet Canadian boy had Shawshank on his ipod and we watched an hour of it my last night at the hostel. woo hoooo!), Roxy, a lovely American girl who I met through my friend Karine in California (we walked all around Sydney one night and had hot chocolate and chocolate-dipped strawberries/waffles at the Max Brenner chocolate bar. yum!), and Chris, my Sydney Angel. He rescued me from homelessness on Friday night. Well actually I would have just checked back into the hostel (I bought a package of 11 nights at Base hostels so I could have used one of those, but I didn't want to). I sent out several requests on couchsurfing and didn't hear back from anyone. After I checked out of the hostel that morning, I posted a message on the Sydney Emergency Couch Request group page but I didn't hear back from anyone all day. After I got back from the beach that night (I walked from the Spit Bridge to Manly Beach and then hung out there for a few hours), I got online and still hadn't received any messages from couchsurfing hosts. I knew they had beds available at the hostel so I wasn't too worried but I really didn't want to check back in, especially because that would mean I had wasted the $6 on the storage locker. Finally, when I had 20 minutes left on my internet card, I got a message from this guy named Chris, asking if I had found a palce to stay. I told him I hadn't and he invited me to stay at his place. It was just a 15 minute walk from the hostel, across a foot bridge that goes over Darling Harbour. When I got there, it was the most amazing apartment building, and Chris was soooo nice! He just came back from a trip to New York and California but I'm hoping he makes another trip out there next year so I can repay his kindness. I had my own room and bathroom at his place, he let me do laundry, took me out to dinner on Saturday night in Chinatown, and he even tivo'd the Heat/Knicks game and we watched it when we got back from dinner. The only bad part about the weekend was that the Heat won. Everything else was completely wonderful. :) His house was the perfect home base for exploring the city and the nearby beaches. I'm so grateful to him for rescuing me and being so much fun to hang out with.
I took lots of pics of MacKenzies Bay when I went there on Saturday. It was so beautiful!
When you walk out into the water, you're about waist deep for a few steps and then there's a big sand bar that goes out about 15-20 yards so you're in shallow water again. It's also one of the only dog beaches in the area so there were adorable dogs running around all day. And it rained a little but the rest of the time it was warm and sunny -- and there's a big rock overhang so I was able to keep my stuff dry while I swam in the ocean in the rain.
It was such a nice day!! There was even a rainbow out on the ocean when I was walking back to Bondi.
Oh! and before I went to Bondi I mentioned to Chris that I wanted to find a used bookstore and pick up a book for the beach. He jumped on google and found a little cafe + bookstore called "Gertrude & Alice" a few blocks up one of the main streets in Bondi. When I got there, I found it right away and it was so cool!! I took pics of it, of course.
I kind of wanted to hang out in there all day but I was excited about the beach so I only stayed a few minutes. I found Cakes & Ale, which I've been wanting to read for years, and it was only $6 because the previous owner for some reason stabbed the book with a sharp object three times so there are three tiny holes all the way through the book. Good times. It's totally readable and every other book I picked up was around $10 so I feel like I scored :) I'm about 3/4 of the way through the book and of course it's excellent. Johnboy, let me know if you haven't read it yet and I'll bring it back for you.
Here are some more pics of Sydney:
Town Hall
obligatory ferris wheel pic
my favorite place to shower/sauna in Sydney :)
Harbour Bridge at night (better pics coming soon)
Me and Roxy in front of the Opera House :)
So that's it for Sydney, for now. I'll be back there before & after my trip to New Zealand in February. It's already almost 1:00 pm (I think I've been at the hotel for almost four hours!) so now I'm off to explore Melbourne once again.
p.s. I just found out the Lakers beat Toronto today for FIVE STRAIGHT WINS!!! YEEAAHH LAKERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D
As for "my other team," they're on a 1-game win streak, thanks to their new boy SASHA!! (no seriously, he had 10 points, 6 rebounds, 3 assists in the win against Atlanta)
this looks so wrong :'(
