Sharing Sydney

Before I came over to Australia many friends told me how they would love to visit me and a few of them even said they’d try. Well Australia is a long way away so you can imagine that I wasn’t counting on anyone coming over whilst I was here. Which is why it was so extremely awesome that one of my closest friends’ partner was asked to speak at a conference in Sydney and even more awesome that my friend decided to join him for two weeks afterwards for a holiday. Obviously they were anxious to have a holiday together as they have both been working very hard over the last few years but they were able to share a few days with me as I travelled up from the Snowy Mountains to see them.

I am slightly embarrassed to admit that though I spent six weeks in Sydney when they asked about things to do I was rather at a loss. The opera house, aquarium, tower and bridge came to mind but in hindsight I spent an awful lot of my time in the hostel just passing the time with my friends. This time though it was completely different. With only two weeks to see as much of Sydney and the surrounding area as they could our day together were much better organised than I had been.

On my arrival we went to find me some food as I had been on the bus for seven hours. From our afternoon snack we headed to the botanic gardens with a bottle of wine to toast our reunion and watch the end of the sunset. We had planned to watch it all but choosing the wine and finding some plastic glasses took us longer than anticipated. We then made our way to Darling Harbour to meet up with a friend of mine from my previous stay in Sydney.  I really wanted us to eat there at least once as I love Darling Harbour; which I am sure makes me very touristy indeed but I don’t care, I think it’s fabulous. After dinner and some more wine it was time to call it a night as it had been a long day for all of us. However I was distracted on my way to my hostel room by another old acquaintance from my previous stay. One of the nicest things about being in Sydney was getting to say hello to the people who made my arrival in Australia so fabulous, though on this occasion I was struggling to string words in to sentences more than usual so after a quick hello I headed off to bed.

Day two was supposed to start with me doing some necessary shopping but my body seemed to realise I was on my day off and decided I would sleep in instead. After a lovely long lie I met up with my friends again and we headed in to the centre of the CBD in search of sushi for lunch and a touristy wander round the various shops and arcades. My friend and I then headed to the Chinese Garden of Friendship without her partner who decided his hayfever would probably be better if he avoided the garden and headed to the aquarium instead. I must say as much as I like my friends partner it was nice to spend time with just her and the surroundings were beautiful. We spent over two hours exploring the garden fitting in tea and scones at the end of it and much girly chat along the way.

Garden well and truly ‘done’ we then went to find my friends partner at a brewery pub he had been keen to visit. My friends had kindly bought us tickets to go to the observatory in the eveing so we walked to the Rocks where we visited the Lord Nelson Pub before having the most delicious meal at Fish on the Rocks. The best thing about dining with close friends is that we were able to sample on anothers meals so I can confirm that every dish we had was as superb as the service. At the observatory we checked out some amazing night photos from a recent competition before heading our side to get a tour of the Southern sky which of course included pointing out the Southern Cross which I had so far failed to recognise. We were then introduced to a 150 year old refractor telescope which was kept in mint condition and worked perfectly allowing us to have a look at the moon before we moved on to a less retty but more powerful newer telescope. Sadly the clouds were moving in on us so we opnly had time to look at one binmary system before it was tio cloudy to see anything. The tour ended with a few short 3-D presentations which turned out to be much more interesting once we realised the polariser in the projector was the wrong way wrong and turned our glasses round to compensate.

My third day in Sydeny with my friends started early as my body clock seemed to be stuck on the idea I was only allowed one long lie a week. This allowed me plenty of time to pack and do some much needed shopping before I had to check out of my room. Check out complete I stored my bags and headed to Circular Quay where my friends and I took a very scenic ferry ride to Parramatta. I was very excited to be going to Parramatta as my room mate is from there. On arrival we decided to wander until a nice place caught our eye for a hot chocolate before heading back towards the centre and the train station.

We caught the train to Town Hall and went to the Queen Victoria Building for afternoon tea, an experience I highly recommend. The surroundings were pretty enough but it was the afternoon tea that made it worth the visit. Tiny delectable cakes and rather large scones with proper cream and a mind bogglingly large selection of tea and my friend was in heaven, as was I. I am always surprised at how filing afternoon tea is, even though we finished everything it was a struggle and none of us felt like eating much for the rest of the day. Though still relatively early the sun was getting low in the sky so we walked to the Shangri-La and took the elevator to the bar at the top. We didn’t quite make sunset but we caught the end and stayed for one drink to enjoy the view of Sydney harbour by night. Lovley though the view was we didn’t feel it was worthy of more than one expensive drink therefore we wandered slowly up George Street towards the hostel managing to stop for one last leisurely drink along the way. However as all good thing do my time in Sydney was coming to an end. Before I knew it we were back at the hostel and I was waiting for my bus and it was time to say goodbye again. One overnight bus ride later and I was back in Jindy with just enough time to get home showered and get ready for work exhausted but with some fantastic new memories of Sydney to get me thought the day.