Sydney, Part 1 of the best two weeks of my life

Disclaimer: The following posts and pictures will inflict strong desires to immediately purchase a flight ticket to Australia. Be prepared to control your urges (or not!)

I had the best two weeks of my life over mid-semester break and the week after. It all started with Sydney, which wasn't even planned until just two weeks prior when I looked at the calendar and realized that I could make a trip out of the four days before the consecutive class field trips. After the frenzy of booking flights, hostels and planning what to do, Elsa and I found ourselves on the 80min flight to the largest city in Australia on the last day of classes before mid-semester break. Upon arriving, that first day was pretty uneventful aside from the two hours that it took for the hostel that we stayed in to arrange the airport transfer (at least in the end we didn't pay for it). 

On Good Friday we woke up bright and early but still just barely made it to the pickup area in time for our day tour to the Blue Mountains. The Blue Mountains are a mountain range about 100km west of Sydney, and called so for the blue haze that appears over them due to the eucalyptus tree oils. Interestingly more than half of our tour group were Indians, although all of them were expatriates. On the road we went and the first stop that the tour guide/driver made was outside of a military reserve for us to look at the kangaroos there.

I was already mind-blown with the incredible view at the 20s lookout stop that we made on the way driving up. The first stop was Scenic World, a touristy place where you could go on these cablecars down to the bottoms of the cliff to get a good look at the Katoomba waterfalls and the Three Sisters. We decided to forgo paying for the cablecars and just hike down (funnily, the tour guide warned us that there would be 1000 steps and to keep in mind of our fitness levels). It was the best decision ever because we had the freedom to go wherever we wanted and the line-ups (queue, as Australians say) for the cablecars were huge.

On top of Scenic World

Afterwards at Echo Point, we got a closer view of the Three Sisters, these three sandstone rock formations that were the icons of the Blue Mountains. You can read about the Aboriginal legend here. I even walked down onto one of the Sisters. After lunch at Katoomba, as a relief from all these people, the guide took us to two other lookout points that were practically empty. My favourite was the last one which was simply this flat piece of rock that juts out off the side of a cliff.

View from Flat Rock

One thing I really wished for was the ability to just explore and hike the area more but obviously it wasn't possible given our time restraints. Definitely an incentive to come back though! Upon returning to the city, we walked around Darling Harbour where there was a circus festival going on and got some good night views of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House (our firsts of many!).

The remaining one and half days we were free to explore the city as we wish so I made a really loose itinerary of what we hoped to cover prior to. I have discovered that I loved planning trips and being someone who thinks sleeping is a waste of time, I tried to pack as much as I can in one day without it being overwhelmingly stressful. Honestly there really weren't much that I would change about how things went for this trip because it really was practically perfect.

Saturday started with a run along the Sydney Harbour watching the sun rise over the Opera House. I had planned to run over the Harbour Bridge and spent forever looking for the entrance to go up that by the time I found it, there wasn't enough time to go all the way across and back. At least I went about a quarter of the way and can now say that I've ran on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I felt like a rebel booking it back to our hostel in King's Cross (the entertainment district of Sydney) amidst the serenity of the Royal Botanical Gardens.

Harbour Bridge

Around mid morning, we (there were now four of us including a friend from Brisbane who arrived the day before and another Swedish girl we met at the hostel) boarded a 30min ferry across the harbour to Manly, a beautiful beachfront suburb of Sydney. We browsed through this arts and crafts market there before hanging out at the beach (and of course I played in the waves) and then getting lunch at this cafe that had amazing sandwiches.

Manly Beach

View of the Opera House from the ferry

Ferrying back to Circular Quay, we took the bus to Bondi Beach for our second adventure of the day. There is a reason Bondi is world famous because it really is a beautiful and well maintained beach. We didn't however spend much time there because it was super crowded and we were eager to get onto the Bondi to Coogee walk. For anyone who ever goes to Sydney, this is simply a must! It is about 7km of stunning coastal cliff top views, passing by 4-5 other beaches, rock pools (one of which I jumped in), bays and even a cemetery (must have paid a lot to be buried in such a cool place) along the way. We really took our time to savour everything, starting a bit after 4pm and reaching Coogee just before 7pm as the sun was setting. The perfect ending to a perfect day.

Bondi Beach

Just a taste of the views along the cliff walk

Elsa and I started the last day with a nice walk to the Royal Botanical Gardens (the best one out of the three cities I've been to), stopping along the way to get a closer look at the Opera House. Maybe it's this ecology class that I am taking or maybe it's the Australia's magic, but I, having never really had an interest in plants before, really got into the trees and flowers that day and wanted to know everything about them. We wandered around for almost two hours there before making our way to Paddy's Markets in Haymarket. If you haven't caught on already, I love markets. Paddy's sold just about everything from produce to clothing to electronics, for good prices too. Afterwards, we had lunch in nearby Chinatown before catching the train back to the hostel to retrieve our stuff for departure. Even though the flight back was extremely turbulent and took twice as long because there was a storm and Brisbane's domestic airport only had one runway (who would have thought that?), nothing would have spoiled this wonderful weekend.

To sum it up, Sydney is an extraordinary city with amazing beauty and climate. The only thing is the sheer number of people that are everywhere, which at times was just too much.

Stayed tuned for parts 2 and 3!