It was a 4 o’clock start this morning – time enough for a coffee and then it was off to pick up Ela before heading to Coolangatta airport for our flight to Sydney. All went off without a hitch, even though it was Jetstar…
We arrived in Sydney and got lost trying to find the shuttle, so gave up and caught the train. We bought the weekly multipass 3, giving us unlimited access to all trains, ferries, buses and trams as far as Newcastle and Kiama and Katoomba. Bargain if you intend to use the trains a bit, which we do.
We made it to the Goldsbrough Apartments way too early to check in, but were able to leave our luggage there. We made our way back to Paddy’s Markets for yum cha at the Marigold on George Street, near Paddy’s Markets. It was just like in China – except more expensive. Our lunch only came to about $32 for 2, so that’s quite bearable. Next stop, since we were already there, was Paddy’s Markets. Ela summed it up quite succinctly: it’s all hair, hats and handbags. Nothing terribly interesting, so we left after a walk down 3 aisles or so.
We’d arranged to meet up with a friend of mine to do the free tour around Sydney, so we headed down to the Queen Victoria Building. It’s changed a fair bit since the last time I took someone there. All the old photos are gone, as is the Queen and her regalia exhibition, and the jade wedding procession too. I asked about it and was told the Queen had moved to Canberra and the jade procession has moved to the Chinese Gardens’ foyer. We can see at least one of them while we’re here. Yay! Of course, no trip to the QVB is complete without a photo or two (OK, it was a lot more than that) if you’re a tourist:
We still had some time to kill, since we couldn’t afford to do more than look in the shop windows at the QVB, so we went across to Town Hall. I remember it having a gorgeous interior, but it was closed, unfortunately. We rested by the front door a little bit while we tried to decide what to do with the next hour. We didn’t want to walk too far because we knew we had a 3 hour walking tour ahead of us, so we decided to go to the pub :-) Why not, after all!
After a nice beer in the pub across the road, we headed back to Town Hall to meet up with my friend. She was already sitting waiting for me so we headed straight back to the QVB for a coffee at the Vienna Cafe. The coffee didn’t stand out particularly in my mind, but we had a nice little catch-up before heading back to Town Hall to find the tour.
We met Matthew, our free guide, just near the anchor by Town Hall. As we waited for the tour to start, the crowd built to about 30 people. Matthew was pretty good, very knowledgeable, and told us things about Sydney and Australia we had never heard about. The tour is well worth doing.
The tour started at 2.30pm and went til about 5.30pm, ending in The Rocks with a great view of the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Here’s some pictures of places we encountered along the tour:
We were very, very footsore after all this. My poor friend had to run for her train to make it home in time to get ready to go out for dinner with her family. We just staggered slowly for our tram to Convention from Central Station.
We collected out luggage and checked in to our hotel and collapsed on our beds for a while. The room is nice and big and, since it’s actually an apartment, has an oven, dishwasher, microwave as well as washing and drying facilities, along with the normal hotel-room fare. Very nice for the price, and really close to Darling Harbour too.
We were both hungry so we had to torture our poor feet back into our shoes and head over to said Darling Harbour to find some food. There’s a food-court in the Harbourside centre, so we checked that our and ended up having a really well priced, not excessively unhealthy meal of chicken and salad for about $7 each at The Wishbone. It was quite delicious.
Of course then I absolutely had to take some night photos of the pretty lights now that I’d done the photo course. Here’s some pretty shots of Darling Harbour and Cockle Bay (even if I do say so myself!):
We headed back to the hotel room to collapse, only to hear fireworks going off at just after 8.30pm. What a shame. I knew that if I got dressed again and staggered back to the harbour, it would all be over. It was sad we didn’t know they were happening.
Overall, a good day, though we’re quite exhausted and sore at the end of it.
