6.4.2017 Camperdown

Our last day in Sydney gave us blue skies and warm sunshine to encourage us to walk around and for Guy to take a lot more photos of this beautiful city. 

Blue skies make everything gorgeous

Coffee was courtesy of Runcible Spoon cafe around the corner from our home.

Macchiato

A bus ride later we were at Central station and having another coffee. Delicious.

Coffee turned upside down by Google who think it looks better that way

Caffeined up to the hilt we marched around the waters edge,  past Macquaries point and into the other side of the botanical gardens. They are stunning. We decide to forgo the $24 each to go to the deadliest spiders exhibition, really? As if this country isn’t scary enough, they charge you to be scared even more.

A ferry ride across the harbour and many, many photos later, and we were back at the fish market. 

Us posing on the ferry

Before you could say white wine, we had Barramundi, chippies, fish cocktail and white wine laid out for us. We also liberally scattered it with the chicken salt we had purchased. Love chicken salt.

Fish n chippies Aussie style

We made our way over to Newtown, via Glebe and a couple of bars. One of the bars, Deep Groove you can choose the vinyl to play so we choose Led Zeppelin and Bowie, you can probably guess who chose which?

Deep groove record collection

It was a lovely last day, reminiscing of our stays in Sydney and how much we love the Australian outdoors lifestyle. Also how we have learnt about strip shopping and Sydney Meetup Groups engaging in naked board games on a Saturday night (and nothing more involved, honest)……..who knew???

Dinner was dumplings. They were good.

Dumplings drizzled in chilli oil

It was accompanied  by VB 

Last drink was at Wayward brewery, 5 mins from our home, for craft ale.

24.3.2017 Sydney arrival, Glebe and Darling Harbour

Amazingly we had the same bus driver all the way from Melbourne to Sydney, a 12 hour journey with just 2 breaks. Thai bus drivers have it easier than that, and have access to unlimited M150 energy drink.

We are staying in Newtown, close to where I stayed when I first went backpacking on my own in 1994. At that time though I was staying with Joanna, my godparents daughter, in her student flat until I finally got the courage up to go out into Oz on my own. It is still a student area but also very cool and hipster with lots of Opp shops (charity to us Brits, short for opportunity) eg Salvos, Vinnies. Reno shops (second hand to us Brits, short for renovation) with all different eras of furniture in them, second hand clothes shops full of shabby chic clothes and arty, designer shops owned by funky creative types. This is before you get to talk about the cafes, coffee roasterys, bars, eaterys, restaurants and street art that are everywhere. It really is a great area for us to be located here and went someway towards Guy forgiving me for booking the no WiFi in Dromana place. 

Newtown street art

Our shabby motel wasn’t open til 10am, so we had a mediocre coffee and breakfast, then another coffee and Guy tried a tumeric latte too. He loved it, I am unconvinced. 

Eventually we were shown our digs, possibly the worst we have had so far, but the cheapest we could find in this expensive city.

We are close to the city and also Glebe, an area we both loved from our last trip here, full of second hand book shops and cafes, again, what is not to like?  

We took a walk through the Uni to Glebe, browsed the bookshops, admired the beautiful buildings, walked into Darling Harbour and watched the clouds gather overhead and begin to drench us. 

Glebe street art
Darling harbour, not in its best light

As has been proven, time and time again, it doesn’t rain in pubs. So that is where we found ourselves.

The rain-free Marlborough Hotel or ‘Marley’

In need of health and non alcoholic liquids our dinner was soup based. Wonton soup for Guy, Laksa for me, which we enjoyed whilst observing a cockroach loitering around our table.