In October we headed down under to Australia for a week visiting Sydney and Melbourne. For those of us that had never been to Asia until a year ago, Australia is still a surprisingly long way away - another 9 hour flight from Hong Kong.
Our first stop with Sydney. Having made our way from the airport after a few hours of plane sleep, we walked down to see if the view really is as good as it looks in all those pictures and videos you see. I can confirm it is - the harbour with the bridge and opera house mean it really is a very impressive.
We spent our Saturday walking round and seeing the sights including a "noodle festival" taking place just by our hotel - guess they put that on to make us feel more like we were in Hong Kong.
Sunday was the type of sunny day that makes a postcard. We decided to walk from Coogee beach up to Bondi beach along the coastal path. You pass lots of different beaches where the beautiful people of Sydney were out enjoying the sunshine (and yes, everyone seems to be beautiful in Sydney!). We ended the walk at Bondi beach where Hannah went for a quick swim, although it turns out that because Bondi is for surfing all the swimmers are packed into a very small area. Looking back at these photos the blue sky really stands out - we don't get that in Hong Kong but you don't notice until I sit here and look at the window and compare.
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| Coogee Beach |
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| Bondi Icebergs |
On Monday we had booked a bike tour round Sydney (thanks to Donya, Nic, Jenny and Danny - this was a wedding present) It was great to be shown round by a tour guide and see some other sights, as well as be shown some of the best places for pictures of the harbour. We even rode part way across the bridge. Half way through the tour we got take to a local brew pub - the Lord Nelson Brewery - although having already spent 48 hours in Sydney of course Hannah and I had already sought this out on the Sunday night and were well acquainted with its rather good beer.
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| bike helmet as proof of some cycling |
On Tuesday we headed off to Melbourne - a short 1 hour flight away. Melbourne is known in Australia as being a city where you can experience 4 seasons in a day and it certainly lived up to it's reputation. We had sun, rain, hail, wind and that was over a couple of hours. Melbourne was where we finally had to get some evidence of quite how expensive things in Australia are - a picture from the local Spar of the cost of a chocolate bar should give you some idea. The recent boom in mining and general success of the Australian economy has meant that it has become a very expensive place to live, although it seems that because wages have risen as well everyone carries on as normal. We spent our time in Melbourne doing lots of walking round including seeing the park where the Grand Prix is held, the obligatory wool shop (I told you there would be wool references) and also the war memorial. We also got the tram around the city and also out to St Kilda for dinner. If you every go there then seek out an excellent bar/restaurant called
La Roche which was doing "Parma" night - essentially a giant chicken schnitzel covered in ham and cheese. We also had some very tasty churros.
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| Churros! |
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| Expensive chocolate.... |
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| Apparently a really good wool shop.... |
On Friday we headed back to Sydney, staying in a nice hotel at the waterfront on a pier. Friday night we did we headed down to the Syndey Opera House bar on the waterfront and met up with our friend Ian (some of you may recognise him as also being our star wedding photographer!). After a beer Ian took us on the ferry to Manly where he lives with his wife Laura and introduced us to a very nice local restaurant for dinner. They offered to act as our tour guides on Saturday, so we headed off again on the ferry on Saturday morning and after a very nice lunch spent the day relaxing on a beach in Manly. We went for a wander round Manly where Hannah was very excited to see some yarn bombing. The evening was then spent in another brew pub -
the Four Pines - highly recommended.
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| The beach in Manly |
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| Yarn bombing 1 |
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| Yarn bombing 2 |
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| Four Pines - tasty food and beer |
And with that it was home time on Sunday morning from another adventure! Great to see another place, get to see sights we thought we would only ever see on TV or in postcards, relax and enjoy good food and beer and catch up with friends - a good combination for any holiday :-)
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