East Coast Travels - Sydney 2

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Day two: We woke up pretty early, had some breakfast at a cafe next to the hotel and at about 10 decided to start out day in the city. We found a leaflet for a free city tour, but decided we wanted to walk around at our own pace, so we noted down all the stops of the tour and walked it ourselves. We started off walking to Town Hall, a beautiful building that kind of reminds me of a way more beautiful Guildhall in Portsmouth. Next to town hall is also St Andrew Cathedral.

The day before we saw someone walking with a Victoria’s Secret bag. I am in love with Victoria’s Secret, but thought the only one in Australia was in the airport (which I briefly saw, but everyone wanted to collect their luggage..). Anyway after google-ing it, I found that there was a store in the Queen Victoria Building, next to Town Hall. The Queen Victoria Building is the most posh shopping centre I’ve ever seen. It’s a beautiful building, but you wouldn’t think it’s a shopping centre (photo right)!

After a stroll through, we went to Westfield and the Sydney Tower Eye. We didn’t go up, but took some great photos of the weird looking tower. There was also a really lovely shopping street in that area, Pitt’s Street Mall. It’s a street where no cars are allowed, so it’s a little quieter than the shops of George Street. From there we walked towards Hyde Park - Sydney isn’t very original with its names, there is Hyde Park, Paddington, Kings Cross....

On our way to Hyde Park we walked past the cutest and probably my favourite street in Sydney, it was the Sydney Arcade. It’s just off of Pitt’s Street Mall.

At the fountain in Hyde Park you can get some great views back at the city through the trees. It’s a great location to just sit in the sun and relax before going back to the busy streets. Here we kind of went back on ourselves, and I’m sure there is a better order of doing things, but we walked all the way down Hyde Park to the Anzac War Memorial.

This is a beautiful building. It’s a lot more modern looking than the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne. There was also water in front of the building, which makes some great reflection photos.

We then walked back to the fountain in Hyde Park and continued going up on Macquarie Street. This goes past the Hyde Park Barracks, the Sydney Hospital, The New South Whales Parliament and the State Library, before reaching the Botanic Gardens.

The Royal Botanic Gardens are just a breathe of fresh air. It doesn’t feel like you’re in the city at all! It’s very quiet and relaxing and strange to stand in the middle of this huge beautiful park and look back to see the Sydney skyline. We had some lunch in the gardens, which only cost us $14 each, and then walked all the way up to Mrs Macquarie’s Point. From Mrs Macquarie’s Point you have a beautiful view of the Opera House with the Harbour bridge in the background, I shot a quick time lapse there, and from there we walked all the way along the Farm Cove to the Sydney Opera House.

The Opera House is very different close up from how I imagined it would be. From far it looks like one building, but when you’re close to it, it looks like separate buildings. It’s very weird. I have heard from a lot of people that it isn’t worth coming up close to the Opera House because it’s a bit underwhelming, but I thought it was great to see it up close and see a completely different angle.

After that we went back up through George Street, looked at a few lanes before going back to our hotel, The lane way in the photo is Strand Arcade. We had some dinner in China Town, which is probably the cheapest place in Sydney to buy food.