Emma & Ben… Far From Home

17th – 21st January 2017

So, onto Sydney! I’m going to start by stating something that I think most people who have visited Australia will disagree with (my sister certainly will); we both preferred Melbourne to Sydney.

That’s not to say Sydney is not a fantastic city, or that we didn’t enjoy our time there, but if we were to compare the two… we both think Melbourne just edges it.

To be fair to Sydney, there were a couple of things that meant we probably didn’t see it in the best light. The first; the weather wasn’t great. It rained on 2 of the days we were there. 

Secondly, we accidentally booked into a backpacker ‘party’ hostel. And I mean a P-A-R-T-Y hostel. 

To give you a flavour of the sort of things going on, the events at the hostel bar whilst we were there included a foam party, an international bikini competition (I tried to persuade Em to enter but she wasn’t up for it, even with a first prize of AUS$300), and a beer pong tournament. We ventured to the bar on the first night, and we immediately felt very old; Em said she felt like we were the mum and dad on the TV show ‘Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents’. Entertaining as it was to watch these young backpackers get increasingly more and more drunk, we retreated to our room about 11pm.

Anyway, onto the city itself. We kicked off with a free walking tour (with the same company that we did one with in Melbourne). The guy who ran it was the guy who set the company up, and we enjoyed it as much as last time. It was interesting, funny and allowed us to get a feel for the city and get to know our way around. It took in all the main sights (Sydney Opera House, Harbour Bridge) as well as a few others not quite so famous. 

In the afternoon, we decided to explore the city a little further on our own, visiting the Observatory (which actually was a little dull, even for a science geek like me), Darling Harbour (where we popped into a bar my brother-in-law used to work at) before heading back to the hostel to try and use the kitchen facilities to get a meal together.Preparing food at the hostel reminded me of being back at uni. There were loads of people cooking in the kitchen when we got there, and it was a bit chaotic to say the least! Some of the meals being whipped up looked amazing; others could kindly be described as ‘basic’. One girl eating opposite us had a tin of peas and sweetcorn with a bit of bread for dinner (I guess times must have been tough). Although the quality of the washing up did not meet my high standards, and I was a bit paranoid someone would nick our food, eating in saved us quite a bit of money and was actually quite fun (and in the end nobody stole our cheese).

On the second day, we decided to explore the Rocks a little more (attempting to follow a guide in the Lonely Planet) and then got all cultured and went to Sydney Metropolitan Art Gallery (it was free which was nice). Some of the exhibits were quite interesting, although others were positively bizarre, and some were what I would describe as “total bollocks” (a bicycle in the middle of a room? An hour long video of people making noises and laughing whilst dressed like the Smurfs? I didn’t get it at all, but maybe others a liitle more sophisticated than myself would enjoy it). I’m glad we went though, and the rooftop cafe was great.

In the afternoon we decided to head for the beach! Sydney is blessed with several amazing beaches, but we chose to hit one of the most famous; Manly Beach. Although the beach itself was nice enough, the highlight was the ferry ride over, which gave us fantastic views of the harbour. We walked around the shops and beach for a bit, before catching the ferry back, and taking a walk through the Botanical Gardens on the way back to the hostel.

Our final day saw us make our way to the other famous Sydney beach; Bondi. Although it was chucking it down, we certainly could appreciate what a lovely beach it was. We then did a walk along the coastline to Coogee beach which had been recommended to us by my sister and my brother-in-law. We really did enjoy this, especially as the sun finally came out. We braved a dip in one of the oceanside swimming pools on the way, but it was absolutely bloody freezing and we lasted all of 10 minutes before climbing out in an attempt to avoid hypothermia. 

In the evening of our final day we went back to the harbour to see it how it looked when it was lit up at night.

Why did we prefer Melbourne to Sydney? We liked the relaxed atmosphere we found in Melbourne; Sydney felt a little more frenetic, although that might have been because we mostly visited the areas frequented by backpackers and tourists. Also, whilst Melbourne felt quite unique, and had distinct neighbourhoods with their own character, the centre of Sydney didn’t feel too dissimilar to a lot of other cities we have visited. It was only when we got out to Bondi that we could really see what makes Sydney different, and why people love it so much. Despite our preference for Melbourne, we enjoyed our time here and would certainly like to visit again one day.

(Posted by Ben)