As I mentioned in my last post, John and I said goodbye to 2014 with a bang by traveling to Sydney, Australia. While not ideal, we left Doha late the night of December 24th, spent about 6 hours in a Dubai Holiday Inn Express airport hotel, flew all day December 25th, and landed around 7 AM in Sydney on December 26th. It was a pretty exhausting trek and to top it off we had a 6 hour time difference, so the jet lag was pretty rough.
Our Holiday Inn- Dubai Airport was very old fashioned…
His and Hers
But, we got a surprise upgrade to Premium Economy on an A380 on our long leg flight. A Christmas miracle! I wasn’t expecting anything because we don’t have status on QANTAS, but it’s a OneWorld alliance member so our Qatar Airways status applied. It was my first time flying this airline, and I liked QANTAS a lot, I would recommend them- despite the long time, we had a very comfortable journey. (Perhaps the guy sitting behind John got a little too comfortable…)
Once we landed, we took the train from the airport into Central Station, then switched lines for another train into Kings’ Cross station. Our hotel was located about a 5 minute walk away, and as expected at 8 AM, our room wasn’t ready so dropped our bags and had breakfast at a café down the street.
While I wouldn’t agree with our hotel’s rating as “4 stars,” it was fine for the 7 days we were there. And I really didn’t book it to be in the lap of luxury, but more so for…
- The location: it was close to a train station, and major buslines. We didn’t rent a car for the week as parking and paying for parking is horrendous. We also could walk to lots of different neighborhoods within roughly 20 minutes.
- The kitchenette in the room: Aside from the first day, we made breakfast in our room each morning and then took it up to the shared rooftop terrace, which hardly ever had any other people on it!
- The terrace: Had views of the Harbour bridge and the Opera House.
Being high season in Sydney, it wasn’t cheap, but it was a lot cheaper than pretty much all of the hotels you would find in the Central Business District or Harbour area. It’s amazing what you can get in different cities, depending on the currency exchange and time of year you visit. Sydney, unlike the previously visited Budapest and Cape Town, was unfortunately at the higher end of the cost spectrum, but we knew this going in so were prepared.
After breakfast we walked over to Oxford Street, and then to the main shopping district around George Street, to experience the absolute chaos of Boxing Day shopping. For those who are American, imagine Black Friday. There were long queues going into many of the stores, policemen directing mall traffic (as in, directing people on and off the escalators,) and all around insanity as people scrambled to get the latest deals and steals. John and I both lucked out and got some great buys too.
We then walked over to the “Harbour” in an attempt to catch the Boxing Day Yacht race, but since we were Sydney newbs, we didn’t realize that there are multiple “harbours,” and the yacht race was not being held at the Harbour with the bridge and famous Opera House. Not a big deal, since neither of us are yacht enthusiasts- it was simply something to do. We settled for lunch and people watching instead, and had our first “schooner” of beer of the trip.
After lunch, we took the train back, stopped and got some basic groceries and snacks, and then took a nap before appero hour on the roof.
For the evening, we decided to venture out to Newtown, a neighborhood South of downtown Sydney, and close to one of the major universities. We were feeling something light for dinner, so just stopped in one of the MANY Vietnamese restaurants for noodle soups. Seriously, there were soooo many Vietnamese restaurants in Sydney. Everywhere you looked there was a bahn mi stall.
Afterwards, we went to a lively bar and had a couple of drinks. A curious observation that I noticed during the trip was that most bars do not have barstools, nor do people mill around the bar area. You’re more so expected to get your drink, and order food there, and then return to a table.
From there we headed back to the train station, and then onwards to the hotel. One thing that was slightly annoying was that the trains do not run as frequently as they do in many other cities. Instead, you have these giant double decker trains that run in varying times ranging from 8 minutes to sometimes as long as 30 minutes in between the next one. We realized this a little too late, so the first 2 days we had some considerable lag in the train stations. One positive about the public transportation though is that even as a tourist you can use the “Opal” card-which is a scan card that you can preload for use on public transport. We used it on the bus, train, and ferry while we were there.
So that wraps up day 1- I was going to continue, but looking at my pictures, we did A LOT on day 2, so I’ll devote a new post to that. G’Bye for now, mate!
Hollers in the 'ha 