We landed in Sydney in the early morning of Sunday and immediately took steps to the place where we stayed. As a result of Kaija’s great work, we had once again found a place in Couchsurfing where we got a free stay. Landed at Sydney Airport, it is good to know that if you are ready to walk a few kilometers, you can significantly save your train ticket. Namely, the closest city train stop is 1.8 km from the airport and you can save 15 AUD when walking there. For some reason, the price of Sydney Airport stops is much more expensive. The subway and the train itself are a super comfortable and inexpensive way to get around Sydney.
We reached our accommodation without much difficulty. It turned out that our host is a wonderful gentleman, who unfortunately had a stroke recently and was just about to get his life sorted again to cope with the difficulty of movement. He was extremely friendly and advised us to go back to the city, as all the tickets are cheaper on Sunday. We immediately took his advice and we were at the Sydney Opera House soon.
Right next to the Opera House, we took a ferry to drive to Manly Beach. The ferry is undoubtedly one of the “must do” things in Sydney. The sea offers a wonderful view of the opera house and the whole city. The journey took almost 45 minutes and we took hundreds of photos during that time. Especially of the sailboats, which blue, black and white sails were especially visible. Those are the colors of the Estonian flag.
Manly beach is a wonderful peninsula with a beautiful bay on one side and a crazy sea on the other side. On the beach of Manly, we chose our destination because there was an international competition for the beach volleyball, where Estonian boys were playing. Unfortunately, however, we arrived so late that only saw the finals of the women. But for that, we got an exciting battle because the US and Australia played and latter definitely wanted to win over a very well-known American couple in front of the home-public, and finally, they did.
After the ball game, we enjoyed laying on the beach and watching the surfers in the waves.
Sydney is famous for its most beautiful beaches in the world. In the afternoon we walked a little further on the Manley Peninsula, bought the picnic material, and watched the locals playing a ball game with SUP boards
In the evening we went back to the opera house and made a picnic right on the staircase of the opera house. We walked around the building and waited for the darkness to arrive. By night, the city became even more live. We walked in front of the ladies and the gentlemen in proud clothing, who perhaps had just left the opera house.
We arrived back to the place of accommodation only late evening., When we went to sleep, we discovered that there were a number of uninvited guests in our room – the cockroaches. Some of us were able to destroy it, but just in case we left the light on for the night.
The next day we had planned to visit the Sydney Bond beach. The weather was fiercely hot for us, so we could not do anything else anyway than be on the beach. With such heat, it is a torture to walk in the city. So getting to the beach was the only choice. And once again we were not disappointed. Bond Beach is undoubtedly one of the best beaches in the world. There was a lot of people again and surfers enjoyed the waves. In the afternoon we walked along the trail along the coast to the next beach. In the evening we found a Russian store where we could buy Karum’s, tartar, sprats, and other homely foods. Bondi seemed to be an area where to move one day. People were chill, a marvelous beach, and whatever nationality food you name, it was undoubtedly there.
On our last day in Sydney, we had a car purchase mission. Namely, we had promised to help Kaija’s sister’s son (who was currently working on the farm) to transport a car from Sydney. We had to get in the morning to meet the car dealer. We didn’t know much about the car, so our surprise was great when we saw Toyota, which was deliberately painted with rust. In fact, it looked like a big bunch of shit. We made a short test drive and everything seemed to work more or less. Under the hood, it also seemed ok and so we made our hands and bought a car. Of course, we knew nothing about the paperwork, and we later regretted that because, at the request of the sellers, we had to sell the car to our name, not to the actual buyer. The friendly German couple definitely left us not to mention that the vehicle was registered in another state and it is quite expensive to re-register to any another state. Anyway, that moment we couldn’t think of it and the car was bought.
We also rushed to the city to renew the car and drive to Bare Island. Unfortunately, the Bare Island Castle was closed when we walked around the island and stayed for a few hours at a nearby beach. Once again, the hottest time of the day we spent at the beach, otherwise we would just have melted.
On the way back to the place we stayed we were stuck in traffic, which resulted in that our car overheated. Jaanus realized that someone had used probably just water instead of coolant. At the gas stations, we didn’t find the necessary coolant. We had to get home somehow with water. Meanwhile, Jaanus was asking from random houses for water in the canister. After several stops, we finally came home. The next day we also found a store where the right coolant was sold and fortunately this did a trick and engine temperature stayed normal.
So, we said goodbye to Sydney and we were on the way to Melbourne, but this you can read already in the next post.
To sum up, we fell quite in love with Australia during this couple of days. Sydney was fabulous! Cheap, easy to get around, enjoyable warm and extremely international. The only negative thing is all kinds of ugly spiders, worms, jellyfish and other characters who can kill you in a second if you are not careful 😊 Despite that Sydney would be a great place where to live.
Guarding a random dog while the owner buys a coffee
