The Place to be (Part II)

Thoughts. Not necessarily in a stream.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Our Sydney adventure

Good evening, time for another monthly update! Finally went for my long-awaited holiday. I tell everyone its adriano's grad trip while he tells everyone its my get-away-from-work trip. I suppose the latter is true to quite a large extent, work was getting really mundane. Its nice to kick back for 11 days and not have to worry about waking up early, taking the train, checking the rats, having late lunch, and taking the train back home. I love holidays.
We chose Australia because the weather is cool there now (its autumn there i.e. cool and dry, whereas in Singapore, its the season I would name Sweatumn i.e. hot and wet). We wanted to go to HongKong at first, the cheaper alternative, but we hear it is sweltering there as well and it wasn't sale season too so we gave that a miss. Qantas was having a promotion S$598 (which actually came up to S$1009 after taxes/phone booking charges, the cheats! but still a good deal) for 2 stop-overs in Australia. Was a little tempted to go to Melbourne and Cairns but in the end, we chose Sydney and Brisbane (to visit Bebe) and off we went!

Sydney was lurvely. Favourite thing about it besides the weather, the streets. The roadside cafes, the girls in their trendy high boots, the dogs and their owners at almost every corner, the pretty orange autumn trees. We landed on a friday night after a 7hr flight and thanks to my brother again, there was a bus waiting for us to bring us to our hotel. It was a rather oldish hotel though (3-star) run by Chinese it seems, situated in Potts Point, which was pretty near Sydney's red-light district, King's Cross. But the hotel had all we needed, a nice big bed, lights, fridge, clean bathroom, air-conditioning (which freezed my ass off in the morning). As soon as we deposited our stuff, we decided to take a walk to Woolloomooloo. A place which is dear to our hearts. Hehe, it had a pie-stand there which was strongly recommended by Sue who lived there for 6 mths. And judging by the hungry-looking crowd hovering around it every night, and our growling tummies, we had no option other than to order a beef pie with mushy peas on top, and another chicken pie with mayo on it. I'm sure they had fancier names but they're hard to recall now. We sat down on a bench overlooking finger pier wharf (I think it was called). Yachts were lined up along the river way with a terrace of tall apartments alongside (so everyone has their own boat, doesn't it make you sick? I want my own yacht too.) We saw a huge one which had a living room fully equipped with large-screen plasma tv and beverage bar, and the owners were cuddled up on the sofa. Whereas adriano and I were cuddled up as well, on the pier trying to take night shots of the nice yacht. Good thing it wasn't TOO cold.
The next day was a saturday, which is a day for marketing, or rather visiting weekend markets. We visited Paddington market (pricey) which was held outside a church, Glebe market (bohemian, pretty cheap, sells food too) which was held outside a school, and Paddy's market (typical pasar malam, just a really big version) which was held in some warehouse in Chinatown. Also went to Fish Market to have fresh lobster and fish and chips and Darling Harbour (more boats). For dinner we visited Leichardt (pronounced as lie-kart), which is Sydney's Little Italy, and had really hearty and inexpensive pasta (spaghetti marinara and meat ravioli). Yums. We even had gelato after that. Double yums. And we are such enthusiastic tourists, where most people would have their legs aching and be yelling out to return to their hotels and their snuggly beds, we instead jumped on a monorail to Star City Casino. And attempted to gamble but lost $5 to 1 cent per try one-armed bandits. Damn them. Then we finally retired to our snuggly beds.
On a sunday, bright cheery beautiful almost cloudless Sunday, we took a train down to Circular Quay and finally saw those 2 unmistakable icons of Sydney:


1. Sydney Harbour Bridge

2. Sydney Opera House


Took loads of photos including some pretty artistic shots done by yours truly of course. Check out my talent man..

Pretty huh?

Anyway, after that we strolled to The Rocks, which is supposed to be a historic part of Sydney where the buildings are older looking and it really did look like a different part of Sydney with the autumn trees giving everything a nice orangey glow. There was a real nice market there. Bought loads of nougat and some earrings. One of which broke before I even got a chance to wear it! Think it can be fixed though, it's really pretty. Another artistic shot from me...


They had this thing at almost every market.. makes your eyes go a little googa


To incorporate our whole "see Sydney in 3 days" itinery (we reserved a day for Blue Mountains and another day for Hunter Valley..wine-tasting..mm), we had to speed down to Town Hall on the rail again (we were so in tune with the public transport there man, we could have been mistaken for Sydney-landers, we've more or less taken every form of transport there besides horse-carriage). Shopped around the city shopping area, visited QVB (Queen Victoria Bldg) and The Strand, didn't buy much though. Then we had to head back to the harbour to take a ferry to Manly Beach! Bought kebabs, salad, and beer for dinner and devoured it as we sat by the beach, surrounded and watched intently by a team of seagulls. We then attempted to be enthu tourists again and took a bus to Fox Studios, which turned out to be mostly closed at night, only the cinemas were open. But the funny thing was we got a little lost and ended up in University of New South Wales where there seemed to be a kind of rock concert going on. The bus we took was overflowing with students, mostly dressed in black, with long hair and piercings, and shouting 'Lamb of God!!'. Damn goth-wannabe rockers.

The next day was Blue Mountain day! 2 hr train rides back and forth. But the view there was magnificent:

Just endless valleys, trees, and plateaus (rather than mountains) stretching as far as the eye can see. Do you see the blue mist? That's how the 'mountains' got its name, its apparently caused by the oils emitted from the leaves of the eucalyptus tree. We even went bush-walking! Climbed down this rather steep flight of stairs into the valley and trekked across the mountains to Scenic World, this touristy spot which provides cable car rides and steep railway rides up, down and across the mountains. It was a rather long bush-walk though.. haha, but was pretty fun and we took some pics with our trusty tripod:

I like this one :)

Next day.. Hunter Valley! What can go wrong with a day of tasting fine wines, cheese and chocolate? Just one thing.. coming out red as a lobster!

Hur hur.. look at his ears! They're glowing red :D

This has turned out to be a pretty long post. Anyway, to end off Sydney, we spent the last day at Bondi Beach, which was simply sparkling in the sunshine that day, and the afternoon before our flight taking a long stroll from the harbour all the way to our hotel, through the botanical gardens. Was lurvely. Goodnight folks.. will update Brisbane adventure in the next post!

The SP, 1:35 AM | link | 2 comments |