Sydney, Australia
Back to city life in Sydney.
In an effort to keep us centrally located on a budget, we stayed in an apartment in Kings Cross. It felt similar to St Kilda, energetic but chill, with lots of good food and people watching. The metro was just down the block with a grocery store next door, and we were only about a 25 minute walk to Circular Quay if we didn't get distracted on our way there. And maybe best of all, we were right by the Sydney Botanical Gardens.
We have found our calling in cities: botanical gardens. We realized we've been visiting them since we were in the States. Seattle, San Francisco, Kuala Lumpur, Christchurch, Melbourne, Sydney, and there have probably been more. It may be the cool flowers that draw us in, or it may be that we've found the comfort of nature in concrete jungles. We get to a city and the first thing we do is find green space on a map. It's so us. Expect a whole post on these gardens.
We actually spent a good five days in Sydney and didn't get itchy to leave. Elliott thinks this may be his favorite city next to Seattle, and I won't argue. It's clean, vibrant, easy going, and has great transportation. We generally prefer to walk over using cabs or mass transit, but after a solid day wandering through the gardens, CBD and Circular Quay, we caved to the system. We're really glad we did. Twenty Aussie dollars each and we had a few days of transportation covered. In the most affordable and best linked system we've used, we had access to ferries, buses, and trains with one card.
My biggest goal for Sydney was getting to Featherdale Wildlife Park. I had been before and have really been craving some kangaroo cuddles. So we took the train and a bus out to Featherdale, which houses one of Australia's most comprehensive collections of native wildlife. This may deserve its own post, because we spent the better part of a day ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the wildlife, learning cool facts, feeding and cuddling marsupials, and having staring contests with the world's most veneous snakes. What a day!
The next day we hopped on a ferry, courtesy of our Opal transit card, and traveled to Manly, world famous for Manly beach. I can see why - it's gorgeous. On a Sunday in the summer, it's also super full of people. We waited in real long queues for the ferry both there and back, and wandered for a while before finding much open space to lay on the beach. There were heaps of people surfing, an ongoing sand volleyball tournament, and generally happy people all around. Not a bad place to spend the day lounging in the sun.
On our final day in Sydney we had heaps of free time before our evening flight. So we wandered back through the botanical gardens and paid a second visit to an awesome exhibit of carniverous plants. We made another pass by the Opera House and hung out in the park by the Harbour Bridge. We had world-famous pies at Harry's Cafe de Wheels. We got stuck on a broken train in a tunnel for an hour on our way to the aiport.
We think we did Sydney right, and we enjoyed every minute of it.
