Amber's Travel Blog - Australia 2023
Sydney - Part 2
Hotel: Mercure Sydney
Hotel Review: This hotel was the priciest, not because it was the nicest, but because we were staying there so close to New Year's Eve ($250/night from 12/29-31). It was nice and in a great location - near the train station and Chinatown - and had a pool and sauna we didn't have time to use. They didn't give us fresh towels and we had to fight to get the conditioner out. We also had trouble getting the wi-fi to work - and the phone didn't work. For the price we paid, we would expect to not have these issues, but worse things can happen!
Sights Visited: Bondi Beach, Bondi Iceberg Pool, Chinatown, Paddy's Market, Sydney Harbour Bridge, Darling Harbor, The Rocks
Restaurants we liked: Concrete Jungle (they had an awesome french onion souffle) and Emperor's Garden Cakes & Bakery for cream puffs
Our thoughts on Sydney (again): This visit was a very different experience with Sydney. I caught up with my Cousin Joe. But before I met up with him and his wife Jen, we wen to Bondi Beach, and got one last Gozleme at the Bondi Farmer's market - gosh I hope I can find a place that makes them here! Then we walked about 10 minutes to Bondi's Iceberg Pool - a 150 year old pool where the beach water collides with the pool. It was only $10 to get in and no wait - and no too crowded. We had a good time there and it was beautiful, but didn't want to stay too long - that Australian sun is intense and you can get burned even with the best sunscreen. Then we did a little shopping and got a beer at a Bondi brewery - Curly Lewis - which actually had 2 sour beers for me.
Then, we headed back to the hotel and met up with my cousin and Jen there. We only had 1 thing left to do in Sydney - Paddy's market - which was a lot more shopping than I expected...so we went through there rather quickly because I didn't want to carry a bunch of stuff around all day. Instead, we went and got drinks and food in Chinatown...then we did a great pub crawl - hitting breweries and bars across many Sydney hot spots - while soaking in some great views of Sydney. Being taken around by locals, we also became well-educated on many aspects of Sydney, including the history of several skyscrapers and their personal relationships to them. My cousin also told us about how he watched the Sydney Opera House go up as a kid...how neat that must have been! We even learned about the local trees - the paperbark tree - which had the most usually soft bark. Cool stuff! They are so kind - and we had so much fun - and a lot of good laughs...much like all the other Aussies we met on our journey. This was such a perfect way to end our month-long trip in Australia. If it had to end, I'm glad it ended this way.
And now I'm writing this in LAX...waiting for our flight to Charlotte. Here are pictures and videos from this last part of our trip!