Thoughts & Stops Travel Diary

Day 116 – Sydney, Australia

Posted on by Shanti

June 2nd, 2019

Sydney Australia is 18 hours ahead of Seattle, so our sleep cycle was a little messed up.  Even though we got into our hostel late the night before, I still woke up around 3am.  I tried to keep resting and looked up stuff to do in Sydney trying to come up with a game plan.  We had breakfast at the hostel and then set out for a free 10am walking tour of Sydney.  It was another great walking tour and a good way to get oriented to the city.  We saw many of the downtown highlights and learned some of Sydney’s history. 

The Queen Victoria Building
This was a cool art display in a back alley. All these bird cages hanging with speakers playing the sounds of birds that used to be native to this are of Australia that are no longer there with the city taking over their habitat. It was a temporary art display that the city liked so much they made it permanent.
This iconic building (Sydney Opera House) is even more impressive in real life! It has a sad story though about the architect never actually getting to see it finished in real life.
Sydney Harbor Bridge
Beautiful trees here
Tallest structure in Sydney – The Westfield tower

After the tour we grabbed some lunch and checked into a new hostel for the night.  I caught the cold that Brendan had when we left home.  We rested at our new hostel for a couple hours before heading back out.  I was very congested, and my head was plugged up.  I had to force myself to get up and go back out again.

Not wanting to miss our first real night in the city, I made myself get up and was happy I did!  We walked back down to Sydney Harbor and it just happened to be the one time of year the city has a big light show called Vivid Lights.  There were tons of people out waiting for 6pm when the city lights up.  We got there right at 6pm and watched the whole thing.  It was really amazing and very pretty!  We walked all around the Sydney Opera House, and over the Sydney Harbor bridge and also went through the botanical gardens.  Everything was lit up and we laughed at ourselves for taking so many pictures.  Everywhere we walked, we would get a new perspective of the city in lights, so I kept taking more pictures.

This street kind of reminded me of Leavenworth, WA during Christmas time.

We walked until we were exhausted.  I tried a vegetable pie from a food cart but couldn’t taste it because I was too stopped up with the cold.  It literally tasted like nothing.  Parking is expensive in the city.  We paid for the first 24 hours in a garage, but on our way back had to move the car and were lucky enough to find free street parking after 10pm until 8am.  Since it was after 10pm we moved the car there and stopped at a store by our hostel to grab a few things including cold medicine before we went to bed.

3 thoughts on “Day 116 – Sydney, Australia”

  1. Those city pictures are AMAZING!! What a beautiful City – that is SO Cool that you were there for the Lights Festival – Glad you didnt miss it!

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