Sydney Baby (Opera House Love)

Hello Wonderful People!
 

After spending my first week in Australia in Melbourne and loving the vibe of the city, I didn’t think Sydney could live up to my expectations. My first impression of the city wasn’t that amazing, I still loved Melbourne and nothing was going to change that. This opinion soon changed as I slowly began to fall in love with this wonderful city.

Considering I was visiting Australia in the middle of winter, the weather was absolutely gorgeous. I’d been scared by several Aussies in Asia who told me I was mad to be visiting Australia in July as it would be freeeeezing. Well, it’s safe to say these Aussie’s needed a sharp reality check, as it was around 20 degrees in Sydney and clear blue skies. If this is a freezing winter, I think they need to hop over to Blighty in January and reconsider their foolish notion of a cold day. The weather can easily change your perception of a place and, even though Sydney is possibly the best city I’ve visited (soz NYC and LDN), I think if I’d traipsed round all day in the rain, my love for this city wouldn’t be as strong.

My first day in Sydney was definitely the best. Despite having had no sleep on a 12 hour night train from Melbourne, then lugging my backpack around 17 hostels before finally finding a room, the rest of the day was pretty peachy. We were lucky enough to have arrived on the final day of The British and Irish Lions tour, so the city was full of rowdy Brits abroad excited for the game. We headed down the Sydney Opera House for some standard tourist pictures. Seeing the Opera House was one of the most surreal moments of travelling, not because anything strange happened but just because I was actually there. The Opera House is such an iconic symbol of Australia, which I’d seen countless times throughout my life and seemed so far away from little old England, that standing outside it seemed slightly bizarre. I took around 1846732 pictures of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge and then sat down for an hour or so, soaking up the sun and atmosphere. The evening proved to be an ideal end to the day, as we headed to a bar to watch The Lions absolutely thrash Australia and revelled with fellow Brits basking in our obvious greatness! Sadly, the night ended with a serious low point, when I thought it would be a cracking idea to buy and eat 3 McDonalds. Oh the shame.

I stayed in the Kings Cross area of Sydney, rather than right in the centre, and I loved it. While it wasn’t the nicest area in the world, it soon became very familiar and there were a great choice of hostels and a great backpacking community. The hostels here were much cheaper than the central ones, and a fair few had free wifi, which is like gold dust in Australia! Kings Cross also had really good transport links, we used the bus to get to the Opera House and the train to get into the centre. Also, if you’re up for being an active bean then it only took around 20 mins to walk into the heart of the city. 

Like a massive tourist i went back to the opera house three times (I really do love it) to see it from different angels and at different times of the day. Such a geek I know, but it was worth it. On Our 3^rd or 4^th day in Sydney, we took a trip to the botanical gardens just before sunset and got a prime spot across the water from the Opera House. It really was a beautiful scene, and one which we photographed intensely for over an hour! Basically one of my life's motos is, ‘if you don't photograph it, it didn't happen’, hence the millions of photographs. And if this wasn’t enough, we headed back to the opera house the following night to watch the sunset from Harbour Bridge, to get another perspective. It’s safe to say, I don’t think I’ve missed a single photo opportunity when it comes to the Sydney Opera House. Cuff me.

My final day in Sydney was spent wandering round shopping then taking a trip to Darling Harbour. We even treated ourselves to a pint in the sun, which was extremely lavish as we were super skint backpackers at the time. Also, what is with Aussie cider? It is nothing like the good stuff we have back home. Id compare it more to fizzy apple juice. Bizarre, but nice. The Harbour was lovely, and I definitely could have enjoyed it more if I'd had more pennies to spend, but alas, this s the life of a backpacker. Poor and free from lavish spends!

 

One day (I keep telling myself this, so it WILL happen) I will go back to this amazing City and live a life of Aussie love in a pent house apartment overlooking the Sydney Opera House. That is the dream folks. 

(I know this post contains a stupid amount of Opera House pictures, but these don't even scratch the surface of the amount I actually have, sorry not sorry).

Byeeee!