We arrived at a deserted Sydney airport after the 4 hour flight from Fiji. Immigration procedures were simple and quickly negotiated, all electronic. We then were inspected by the border control agency who looked through our luggage and passed us for entry in Australia. I had pre booked an airport pickup, who were waiting for us at the exit to the arrivals hall. We were quickly on our way to the centre, via a small detour due to the market being set up on The Rocks, which did give us an opportunity to view the iconic bridge at night, from an unusual angle.
We've been lucky enough to visit Sydney before, so we knew our way around.
We stayed in the Holiday Inn on the Rocks, very well placed hotel for everything the area has to offer, and only a 5 minute walk from the piers on the wharf, and a mere 15 minutes from the Opera House.
On our first morning, we woke to a bright blue sky and a warm day, we had a walk around the market and made a few souvenir purchases, which we didn't have to carry round, just nipping up to the room to drop off.
We had decided to purchase a book of tickets to allow entry to some of the unusual museums Sydney has to offer. so we duly visited the Justice & Police Museum , Sydney Museum and Susannah Place Museum, which reminded us very much of Beamish In the North East of England.
On the first evening we took a dinner cruise out from the harbour, along to Darling Harbour under the Tyne....sorry Harbour Bridge. The ship then makes its way past the Opera house for 45 minutes or so, before turning around and making its way back to the Central Piers. Food was good, wine too, just a very pleasant way to spend an evening.
We really seemed to 'get' Sydney this time around, we decided to do the hop On/Off bus and ended up in Bond Beachi, where we took a walk along the cliff front to Bronte beach. We were rewarded on our return when a few pods of dolphins could be seen just off the shore making their way along the coast.
After lunch we made our way back into the city , we left the tour at the north end of the city at the train station, and made our way back down to the Rocks, just meandering along the streets.
We booked onto the first Sydney Opera House - Behind the Scenes, tour of the day, pleased we did as there were only 5 of us on the tour, compared to the normal 20+, so we managed to have a very enjoyable tour.
As we walked back around the Piers we caught a ferry just about to leave to Manly. Its a short ferry ride of around 45 minutes, and from the port its a straight walk through the town to the beach, where having Fish and Chips is the thing to do, just like seaside towns all over the world. so that's what we did, eating out of paper on the sea front, on a clear blue, warm Australian Day.
Generally the food we had was top quality, we ate mostly around the Rocks, where this also a Chefs School, we tried to get a table to find it was booked several weeks in advance, it did look very interesting.
Sydney also attracts many of the worlds greatest shows and concerts, while we were there Les Miserables was playing, we managed to get tickets for our last night in Sydney.
The following morning we made our way to the airport for our flight to Singapore. Taking all things into consideration we decided to use Scoot Airlines, which is the low cost arm of Singapore Airlines. We booked seats in ScootBiz, while sounding grand, in real terms only marginally more expensive than economy class on one of the many full service airlines that fly the route. The flight was on the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which I later found out was on an aircraft only 1 week old....it still had that new car smell about it.
There wasn't back of the seat entertainment, or free drinks, but there was full size leather seats, with a generous 38 inch seat pitch, which meant I could stretch out quite enough on the 8 hour flight to Singapore. So its an option worth thinking about if you have the choice, and you are tall and value space.
