What was planned as “a quick city stop because our flight to New Zealand is cheaper with a transit in Sydney” turned out way better than we expected! Were our expectations just set low because of other travellers saying “Melbourne is much nicer than Sydney”, or was it because of the very welcome contrast compared to our 4 months in Nepal & South-East Asia, anyway… we loved our time in Sydney and could definitely spend more than 3-4 days there.

Our Sydney days started with rain and a weather forecast that didn’t promise any better for the next 3 days, but in the end we had very beautiful and mostly sunny days. And of course, a bit of sun always brings the best out of a city (although this doesn’t count for the loud trashy-drunk type gents and girls that are also a part of Sydney 😉 ).

What we did?

• Explored the city on foot: Opera House (which was at first sight -in the rain – a bit disappointing because of its yellowish colour but soon whitened up by the sun), Harbour bridge (impressively big!), the Rocks (nice area with old buildings that house nice restaurants & bars), Botanical gardens & Hyde park (green in the city), …
• Cooked homemade spaghetti in our hostel, njom njom njom!
• Took the ferry to Manly (a beach getaway that is very popular and reminded us a bit of the Belgian coast towns on hot summer days… except for the water that is clear blue, the waves that have surfers and the buildings that are not as high J). After exploring Manly a bit, but leaving the beach for what it was, we did a 10km beautiful coastal walk from Manly to the Spit.
• Explored Darling Harbour on Saturday night, where Australians & tourists (extremely) dress up to go out. After some people-watching we continued our way to Glebe where we had a nice dinner in a Spanish restaurant.
• Slept late, since we FINALLY got a bed that reminded us a bit of our bed at home, mmmmmh!
• Took the bus to Bondi Beach (thè most popular beach of Sydney), which is -we must admit- a very beautiful beach but it is so crowded (high season, nice weather AND Sunday…, but probably it is often like this) so we again took a coastal walk, from Bondi Beach, over Bronte Beach to Coogee Beach. We were definitely not alone here, but it was still very nice. We stopped for a swim on one of the smaller beaches and were surprised by the strength of the waves (especially Céline who nearly drowned following each wave that passed 🙂 ).
• Last afternoon spent shopping, which -after some shopping in Yangon- made us ready for part 2 of our trip: new flipflops for Céline, new shoes for the both of us, new shorts for Benjamin, …

Sydney, we’ll be back! (with hopefully more money to spend :-). Although our 9 AUD ice cream tasted like heaven in a cup, it still was too f*cking expensive!)

Random fact: This new blog post was brought to you thanks to a three hours delay for our flight to Christchurch in New Zealand.