Check out photos of Sydney here.
what we did: Added as a quick stopover on our way to Nepal (we also stopped in Thailand and India), we spent just a measly 3 days visiting Sydney. But we sure did make the most of the time. In those three days we squeezed in a sweeping bike tour of the city, a fancy night out to the ballet at the Sydney Opera House, beach time with the hip crowds at Bondi Beach, live music at a neighborhood food festival, and met up with two local friends (Hi Don! Hi Latoya!). And because we stayed in Manly, we got to take the historic Manly Ferry through the Sydney Harbor and past the Sydney Opera House five different times (including day, night, and sunset trips).
Classic Sydney skyline
overall impression: Great weather, great scenery, great people, great city. And we love ferries! Oh, and the Opera House really is as cool as it looks.
exchange rate: 1 USD = 1.1 Australian Dollars
relative cost: Probably not much different from, say, San Francisco.
the people: Refreshingly diverse after so much time in rural New Zealand. Very fitness conscious: we saw people exercising everywhere.
the climate/weather: Our entire stay was warm and sunny even though it was getting well into Autumn. We can see why there is such a strong beach culture in town.
we recommend:
- Seeing anything in the main theater at the Sydney Opera House. It’s magical.
- Bonza Bike Tours. Our half-day tour of the city was breezy and fun. We saw all the main sights and learned the basic (and cool) history of town with time spared for a mid-trip stop at a 1700s pub for a pint.
- Lodging: Q Station Retreat. We found this place on the internet for AUD$120 per night including breakfast, a steep discount from the normal $400+, and it was super-fancy. For the last 200 years, this place was used to quarantine passengers arriving by boat who showed signs of disease until they got better (or didn’t). Q Station is now a hotel, event center, and home to ghost tours. Our room (rooms really) was/were in the building used to lodge quarantined first class passengers and had more square feet than our first Seattle apartment. And it came complete with two separate bath tubs!
Brendan // May 10, 2010 at 4:25 pm
So glad Sydney treated you guys well.
Was the Quarantine Station creepy?
My grandparents subscribed to the ballet at the Opera House for decades and finally had dress circle seats.. it always made for a fancy night out, even if us kids didn’t like ballet.
gray // May 10, 2010 at 10:30 pm
We didn’t find it scary, though admittedly we didn’t take the ghost tour!
Manuela // May 17, 2010 at 9:51 pm
Brendan, what are dress circle seats?
Grayleen, admit: how did you find the ballet? I imagine Gray getting a wee bit bored.
Do you think if you lived in Sydney, which neighborhood do you think you’d live in and why? (Bet you didn’t think you had an essay question coming!)
gray // May 30, 2010 at 1:49 am
The ballet: You know me too well! Yes, I got a bit bored/sleepy towards the end when the pace slowed. But it was way, way better than I expected. Aileen, of course, loved it!
Neighborhood: No way I could answer that; three days isn’t enough time.
Brendan // May 17, 2010 at 9:59 pm
Definition seems to vary a bit. At any rate, they were front row of the circle (the second level, i.e. balcony), slowly moving towards the center as the years went on.
Brendan // May 17, 2010 at 10:01 pm
Oh, very cool that they still have a ghost tour. Always meant to do it, but haven’t yet.
We took a school excursion to the station during the daytime and the old mass-shower building and the dilapidated surgery rooms were freaky enough.