Sydney, NSW,
Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Mon 29 Dec 2014 05:54
That night after a short walk and a glass of red wine, cheese and crackers, we had an early night. The next day we went on the Sydney city tour, stopping off for lunch at Darling Harbour. We saw all the main tourist sites and got a good idea of where everything was.
Familiar sites.
The rest of the people we were meeting for New Years Eve had also arrived by now, so we all got together for dinner that evening. We managed to be the last to leave the restaurant, not too difficult as they had started packing up by about 10.30pm, and managed to find one of the few bars open after 11pm for a night cap or two. Despite the fact we are staying in Kings Cross, which along with being the red light district is also backpacker heaven with hostels on every corner, when we walked home about 1.30am there were hardly any bars still open, which was a bit of a surprise.
The next day we did the second part of the tour going out to Bondi Beach. Although this is the beach everyone has heard about, we deiced that we would just go and have a look rather than spend the day there. It is like Blackpool with sunshine. Although it is arguably one of the famous beaches, it is certainly not the nicest, and it was packed! Sydney at the moment is very busy. We are coming back here in two weeks to drop Alex off after his holiday and it will be interesting to see the difference out of the magic holiday period.
Bondi Beach
On New Year's Eve we decided to wander down to the harbour and see how the preparations were going. We had been watching the news in the morning, and people had been camping out the night before NYE to be the first to get in to the gated firework view points at 10am. The were queues all over the city and cordons were going up and roads were being closed as early as 11am. When we eventually got to the harbour, about lunchtime, people were settled for the duration, with chairs, coolers and all the other essentials. The security was reasonable in that they were doing a cursory search of bags, but nothing else despite the recent cafe siege. The whole place was absolutely buzzing, and again heaving with people. We managed to grab a table in a restaurant which was a great place for people watching over lunch.
After a very late NYE night, we didn't get off the boat until nearly 2am, we had a leisurely day at Manly Beach planned. This is another very popular beach, nicer than Bondi, but it was nearly towel-to-towel and very hot. Unfortunately, there was very little swimming allowed due to the strong currents and undercurrents, which you could feel even when you were just paddling.
John outside the Lord Nelson, the oldest continually licensed bar in Australia - a pint or two was obligatory!
The Opera House at night - a truly spectacular building.
The weather here is hot and humid today, and feels like a storm might be coming, but all the forecasts just say it is going to get hotter and hotter, up to 40 degrees some places we are going. Tomorrow, Saturday 3/1, we are heading out to the beach for a couple of days before Alex arrives on 6 January. Then it's wine tasting and the mountains for a week or so.
Sent from my iPad