Exchange rate $10 = 6.50p.
We arrive in Sydney at 3 p.m. and it is pouring down! (No change there then!).
Our friend Debbie and her daughters Ellie 10, and Abbey 8, meet us at the airport. We are going to be staying at Tim's (Debbie's husband) parents for a few day's. His parents are actually away, but have said we can stay in their house anyway, how kind is that? Just to fill you in on Tim and Debbie, I met them both when I worked at the Hundred House at Norton, Tim was an Ozzy chef who worked for us for 6 months and Debbie was a waitress who worked for us at the weekends, they got together and recently moved back here. They celebrated their 14th wedding anniversary last week!
The house we are staying in, is in a suburb called Willoughby. It is about a 20 bus journey into the city.
Tim is the head chef in a fish restaurant called Garfish in a town cilled Crows Nest. Debbie has booked a table for us all. Tim is working and Debbie and the girls, don't come down to the city very often (they live in Springwood, about 1 and a half hours away). What a spoil. Tim sends 3 starters over,- smoked eel croquettes, salmon pate and squid rings! all delicious, followed by fish curry (me), fish and chips (Matt) and fish pie for Deb. No room for desserts, but they come anyway! A steamed date pud with rum ice-cream and a panacotta with the most amazing cointreau sauce, well it would have been rude to leave anything, so we struggle through them!
Sunday a beautiful sunny day. We all catch the bus into the city. We walk over the Harbour Bridge (built in 1932, 6 million hand driven rivets and $20 million, it took the city 60 years to pay it off), we look out over the harbour to the Opera House, (finished in 1973, millions of $'s over budget and the highest peak measuring 63 mts), unfortunately, it is having some work done on it, so there is some scaffolding up around it in places, even so, it is an amazing bit of architecture.
We walk down to The Rocks, an area almost under the bridge with cobbled streets and little market stalls selling local crafts. From here we make our way around the harbour and catch the ferry to Manly. This is a 30 minute ride away on the northern peninsula. It has a beautiful white sand beach and it's a surfers paradise. It's full of trendy shops and cafe's.
Sundays are always a good day to be town, as you always get locals and street performers entertaining you!
Maonday, another beautiful day! Get the 8.30 bus in to the city. First stop is the Botanical Gardens, Hyde Park then on to Darling Harbour, a very modern and trendy part of town then to Chinatown for lunch. 2 very good meals for $19 (I've never seen so many king prawns in one dish before!). From here we walk back around the harbour to Pyrmont and eventually make our way to the sky tower or Tower Eye, as they call it. We pay out $25 and watch the sun set over Sydney. We watch as the lights come on all over the city and the harbour bridge is very impressive when lit up.
We make our way back to Willoughby, it's been a long day, it's about to get longer, as we miss our bus stop! As if we haven't walked far enough today! Never mind, we happen to pass a pub, so call in there for some much needed refreshment and then we walk past our first sight of a 'drive through' liquor shop!! How cool is that? Eventually get home about 8.30 p.m.
We get our Apollo Toyota Hiace Camper booked for Friday collection. Why is it you can never actuall speak to anyone? You have to do it all 'on line', it drives us mad!
We know it's corny, but we feel like we really ought to go to see Bondi Beach. It's like every other beach, oh except whenwe are there, there's a big digger moving sand back down the beach! There's a 6 km coast walk you can do to Coogee, via lots of pretty little seaside towns and bays, it also passes a really large graveyard overlooking the sea!
Matt and I have agreed we need to start excerising! All this travelling is making us lazy! We walk to Chatswood, another suburb about 20 minutes away. We can't believe how eateries there are and lots of street vendors too! We purchase a skipping rope, ball and a dongle for this new little lap-top we treated ourselves to in NZ, so we can a keep in contact and keep the blog up to date whilst we are travelling in the van!!
Friday, pack up our rucksacks and hit the road! Catch the bus, then train to the other side of the city to pick up the camper, we are in the office for nearly 2 and a half hours! To say they were short staffed was an under statement! We eventually get away at 2.45. The camper is less than a year old and is very tidy.
We make our way slightly south of the city and drive a couple of hours to Shoalhaven on the coast, we freedom camp in a carpark right in the beach. In the morning the surfers start gathering to see if the surf is any good. It is! The beach is beautiful and almost empty apart from a couple of dog walkers.
We say good bye to Sydney and head west, we are to spend a few days Tim and Deb in Springwood in the Blue Mountains.
For a couple who don't really like cities, we actually really enjoyed Sydney, it was clean safe and modern but when you look closer, it did have a 'little' bit of history too!
