More of Sydney

We've been very fortunate with the weather.....it's been sunny everyday except for 1 in Sydney when it was overcast and occasionally spit a few rain drops throughout the day. The following day it was back to sunny skies and warm temperatures. 

Just a short walk from the hotel is the Royal Botanic Gardens. Founded in 1816 by Governor Macquarie (he's responsible for building a lot of landmark sites in Sydney) the gardens are situated just east of the Opera House and sit on about 30 hectares. The Sydney Harbour borders the gardens on the north and provides for the gardens to be that much more scenic as a result. We read that visiting the gardens first thing in the morning is best because that's when you can get the best glimpse of the wildlife. This is true. We went after breakfast and were treated to seeing a wide variety of birds. Especially abundant was the Lorikeet who were feeding off the nectar of flowers. The gardens are full of hundreds of different flora species and thankfully they labelled most of them. This fig tree was planted in 1845 and is absolutely massive.

You can access the boardwalk leading back to the Opera House and Circular Quay from the gardens. One morning we decided it a good idea to run the boardwalk past the Opera House, along the garden's edge and over to Woolloomooloo Bay - roughly a 5km return run. I'm really liking these away from home runs mostly because we've been fortunate to find some really scenic routes but also because it helps me to stay on my running. We saw a lot of Sydneysiders out running as well and it would seem that most of the locals we encountered are fit and enjoy an active lifestyle. How can you not with such a great waterfront boardwalk?

We took a 10 minute ferry ride over to Watsons Bay which is about 11km north-east of Circular Quay. After getting off the ferry, we walked up Military Road to the highest point in the area where in one direction you have views of the Sydney Harbour bridge in the distance and the other direction provides views of the Pacific Ocean and the rock cliffs upon which this point is located on. There is a gap between two rock cliffs conveniently known as The Gap. It's quite a sight to see the ocean pounding at the rock cliffs and I wonder how many more years it will take to erode the cliffs to a point of instability.

The Rocks, one of Sydney's oldest established neighbourhoods, is adjacent to Circular Quay. We took another I'm Free walking tour through this area and learned there is a great rich history for the area. The area was established shortly after colonization in 1788 and had a reputation of being a rough part of town. It's much safer nowadays and it's a pretty cool area to walk through as the streets are all pretty inter-twinded and still have the original stones from which they were built. Story has it that the stones in the streets are actually the stones used to stabilize the ships that came over during the colonization. Whether true or not, still makes for a great story. We enjoyed a great dinner at one of the restaurants here called The Vintage Cafe after the tour and also got to listen to a guitarist play. This area is starting to experience some gentrification with the government starting to sell the rental flats in the buildings they own. The buildings are old and in need of a good renovation and the government figures why not make some money instead of spending money to fix them. The amount the flats have sold for is astounding, north of $1.5M for a 4-bedroom flat. Might sound reasonable given the number of bedrooms and given the location, but if you took a look at the building and knowing that the interior needs to be gutted and redone, seems a little high. Interestingly the buildings have been given heritage status so cannot be torn down. Needless to say the residents in the area are not happy with this most particularly because they are being forced to move. Our guide on this tour reminded both of us of a surfer-dude, fitting I guess seeing as we are in Australia. 

As in most major cities, the "American" fast food chains have made their way to Sydney.  We saw locations for McDonald's, Subway, Starbucks, KFC and 7-11. There is a fast food chain called Hungry Jacks which has a logo and food menu eerily identical to Burger King. Their whopper tastes about the same as BK. Speaking of food and how adventurous I am....not....I did try a kangaroo kebob, which I actually found to be quite tasty. The meat was flavourful and quite tender. I had read that kangaroo could taste quite gamey but I didn't find this the case; might have been the way this kebob was prepared. We caught the tail end of The Rocks Village Bazar and found a vendor who had discounted his skewers to $10 for 1 kangaroo and 1 prawn. Also tried vegemite...one word to sum that up: disgusting!!! I really don't know how people can eat that. I only tried a tiny bit but man did that taste last for some time....yuk! It contains wheat and barley and it sure tastes awfully like that. 

A very beautiful beach about a 30 minute ferry ride north from Sydney CBD is Manly beach. Situated on the Pacific Ocean, this beach is probably one of the nicest beaches in Sydney. It's a short walk from the ferry dock along a side pedestrian street lined with shops and restaurants. The surf here was great for surfers and there was no shortage of them catching waves. The water felt a little cooler than in Port Douglas or Noose but was refreshing nonetheless. 

Our last beach day was at Coogee beach. Now everyone always thinks that Bondi beach is the place to go, but all the locals we talked to said skip Bondi and head to Coogee. So we did. We took a bus from our hotel and arrived about 30 minutes later. Coogee is situated in the suburb of Randwick, about 8 km south-east of Sydney. This beach is popular with the  locals. The waves here were a little more rough for my liking so I didn't really spend much

time in the water. Z enjoyed it immensely though. We started to notice blue box jellies wash ashore so once we noticed them we pretty much stayed out of the water not wanting to get stung on our last day. It's also at Coogee where we met up with a former co-worker of Z's and his family. We had a great visit with them and learned a little more about their time living in Sydney. It was a fantastic way to end our last day in Sydney.