I had a great day in the Australian Museum exploring the history and culture of Australian’s indigenous people and the endemic fauna and flora. I learned that if you get stung by a Box Jellyfish and its tentacles cover more than ten percent of your body’s skin, that it is actal lethal. They alos had an interesting exhibition about dinosours.
I spent some hours in the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, which is located in The Rocks just next to Circular Quay. Entry is free and they some really nice exhibitions. Some interesting one was about the history of aboriginal people in Australia and how badly they were treated by the police and justice.
I had some really nice burger for lunch on the rooftop terrace with an amazing view on the Harbour Bridge.
While walking around The Rocks I saw an old Ford Mustang parked in front of the Overseas Passenger Terminal with the Harbour Bridge in the background. How cool was that.
One of the big cruise ships was also just being pulled out the harbour by a small boat.
Later on I went to Observatory Hill to take some nice pictures of the Sydney Harbour Bridge during the golden hour.
I went to the Justice & Police Museum in Sydney set in an 1890s police station. It explores Sydney’s criminal & forensic past and has some really interesting stories photos about former criminals on display as well as an old court room.
In the afternoon I took the train to Auburn Botanic Gardens where a Cherry Blossom Festival was about to take place. Aparently the biggest in all over Australia. Auburn is about an hour by train from Sydney. If you pass all the western suburbs of Sydney you get a good impression that not all is sunshine in Australia.
There was a free shuttle bus from the train station to the gardens. It was totally crowded there, mainly Asian people being there. The part with the Japanese Garden was relatively small with only a handful of quite small cherry trees. The ones back home in Bonn and Cologne are by far much more impressive. Nevertheless some people really went crazy taking selfies under the trees, some even wearing special costumes.
On Saturday, August 26 I did some kind of photo course, where a bunch of people met up with a local photographer for a few hours to learn and explore. I had signed up for this online. It was quite nice, I learned some new skills. We had met at the University of Sydney, where they had some Open Days ongoing for the future students. So there were quite some nice photo opportunities.
You haven’t been to Sydney if you haven’t been to Bondi Beach they say. So I went there for a stroll on the beach. Took some photos, had some lunch at MC’Donalds. It was quite windy on the beach, though some surfer’s were out trying to catch a wave.
In the evening I took the escalator next to Circular Quay, walked all along the highway up to and finally over the Harbour Bridge to the other side where the Luna Park (a theme park) is located. I spent quite some hours there (until around midnight) and took some good shots with my camera.
Unfortunately this was the last day now me and Friederike would spent together in Sydney as she had to take her flight back home to Germany in the evening. We decided to take a bus to Watsons Bay which is one of the most eastern points of Sydney where the harbour area merges into the open sea. We took a walk through the park there, had some time to enjoy the views on the distant Sydney skyline, passed by a lighthouse and finally had some really good and fresh fish and chips next to the ocean.
We took a ferry back to Circular Quay and then had a short walk onto the Sydney Harbour Bridge to take a photo of us both which we had already taken there eight years ago. So we tried to make a similar pose. We even were the same shirts wearing as eight years ago!
A short walk to Darling Harbour finished off the day. I brought Friederike to the airport later after saying goodbye to our hosts Kathryn and Ron. Kathryn promised to take good care of me, when Ike was gone.
It was a tearful farewell at the airport. Now I was all alone in Sydney, after having spent so many weeks together on the road and having such a great time…
We went to the Fishmarket where you find all the different sorts of (eatable) fish you can imagine. And plenty of it. Some really really big crabs, which unfortunately have to wait for their buyer in a fish tank, still alive but with their pincers tied up so they cannot hurt the other crabs in the same tank.
We had some delicious sushi as well as some oysters scalloped with cheese. They also sell fruits and vegetables here and there was a really good deal for six really big passion fruits. As we found out later they were really delicious. 🙂
For the afternoon we had booked a guided tour of the Opera House. This was really interesting. We even got the chance to see and listen to some rehearsal of a classic orchestra in the main hall. The inside architecture of the Opera House is – as the outside – really stunning.
For dinner we went to a hidden bar (they are currently totally en vogue in Sydney). It is not so easy to find them as they normally do not look like a bar from the outside and there are not big advertising signs. The first one we went was called Stitch Bar, so the entrance had some old sewing machine to draw your attention. We had some really good burgers here.
The second one was the called the Barber Shop. And this was really a bit more tricky if you wouldn’t no the adress. During the day it is a normal barber shop, but after hours the front door is still open but the shop is poorly lit (so you don’t expect it to be open). At the back of the shop there is a metal sliding door, and once you pass that you enter very stylish bar which serves really good cocktails and gin. We each had an Australian gin with tonic. They tasted both really good.
On the second day it was even colder, very windy and cloudy. Equipped with warm jumpers we explored the neighborhoods of Paddington and Darlinghurst. Those consist mainly of old two story brick houses. We walked all the way to downtown, where we saw some artistic dancers performing on the outside glass facade of a tall building. It was really a beautiful ballet like performance along some classical music. Some nice old shopping arcade was also crossing our way. We walked through The Rocks again and finally ended up near the Opera House.
Back home we went for dinner to a Japanese Restaurant just around the corner – a recommendation from our host Kathryn. The food there was really good and relatively low priced (by Sydney standards).
We had to get up quite early in Brisbane to catch our plan at eight in the morning. Was a bit of a hassle to find the drop-off for our rental car. Finally we managed it at we still were good on time at the airport.
In Sydney we took the airport train to Central and then we changed the train to Kings Cross where our lovely AirBnB was about a five minute walk from the station.
Kathryn and Ron, a semi-retired couple, were our hosts. They were really lovely, caring and helpful. The room was quite small but very nice. The balcony was our little coffee kitchen. The only downside was that it was quite cold in the room, aparently because it was also really cold and windy in Sydney right now (August, still end of winter / beginning of spring here, was the windy month). Ron brought us a separate electrical heater in the evening which help to make the room warm and cosy.
On our arrival day the weather was quite good, with plenty of sun. We had a walk from Kings Cross to the city centre more or less along the coast and through the Botanical Garden until we reached the famous Sydney Opera House which is totally amazing. On the way we had a lunch stop at Sydney’s famous Harry’s Pies, and yes the pies were really tasty.
And not to forget, of course, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which looks just fantastic and which is probably one of the finest steel constructions in the world (next to the Eiffel Tower in Paris).
In the late afternoon we strolled through The Rocks, one of Sydney’s oldest neighborhood just next to the Harbour Bridge and a heritage protected site. We had a good cold beer there.
In Brisbane we arrived quite late in the evening. We had booked an apartment shortly ahead and we good a really good deal. It was very spacious and it even had a washing machine and a dryer. As we had some laundry to do, we were very happy to use it.
We then went out for dinner at a waterfront restaurant where we had some really delicious soft shell crab burgers.
After dinner was photo time: we walked around the city and I took some nice shots.
