Living La Vida Loca

When Andrew and I visited New Zealand in 2019 we jumped over to Melbourne AU for just a few days on our way home – to get a “taste” of Australia. Admittedly that’s akin to saying, “We visited St Louis, MO and got a taste of the United States”! In any case, this time we decided to make our stop in Sydney – for longer – with enough time to really explore the city and many of the surrounding beaches, parkland, and smaller cities with their own character.

We were lucky again to find a wonderful couple on Home Exchange that offered us their home in the quiet suburb of Lugarno. The original plan was for these folks to go to Bali while we occupied our house – and we’d give them “guest points” (the barter item used that has no actual monetary value – it’s a trading tool). Due to travel costs (don’t we know!) they decided to take a more local vacation outside of Sydney and let us stay in their lovely house. Bruce and Patricia are consummate hosts…they left us not only super comfortable beds but a super vacation-equipped kitchen, a patio with a BBQ and a delightful view of the nearby river, and a resident kookaburra!

Our first night included a great Thai meal at a small local restaurant. Other than the meal, a highlight was an incredible cacophony of noise that a gang of unknown birds made for the entire time we were sitting and eating (and beyond). I’d honestly never heard such a racket come from one tree! Not sure what the discussion was but it sounded like one of the heated debates on the Senate floor.

Sydney is such an expansive city with so many cultural activities and scenic side trips to take in, we had to make some choices despite the almost ten days we had there. Our first exploration day included the city’s botanical gardens and Manly Beach – very different experiences. The Royal Botanic Gardens in the very center of the city and even with the more than an hour we spent there we didn’t see the bulk of it. There are lovely rolling green vistas with local birds feeding among a wealth of different greenery…an herb garden I wish I could have taken home with me it was so varied and abundant with fragrant items I love to use in cooking…a spectacular rose garden (and everything was blooming!)…and so much more. Definitely one of the nicest gardens I’ve been to aside from the incomparable Buchart Gardens in Victoria, BC.

While you enter the gardens from a main downtown throughfare, the other side of the park extends to the water with a lovely walkway that leads to the Sydney Opera House and beyond to the area called Circular Quay. Sydney is set along many waterways – hence the ferry system – and all the ferries that take folks to the numerous bays, beaches, and even the famous Taronga Zoo plus cruise ships that dock in Sydney all come into Circular Quay. It’s always bustling there. We got our first real closeup look at the iconic opera house as we made our way to our next stop. It sits on an outcropping that faces the Sydney Harbor Bridge – also a major iconic structure. There is the opportunity to actually walk across the top of this bridge – at a rather steep incline and price tag – but we decided we’d just watch the other crazy tourists do it!

Before heading on to our next stop we walked through the section of town called The Rocks. The first residents of the Rocks were convicts and sailors from the old nation. As the oldest neighborhood in the city, the area’s cobblestone streets host more than 100 heritage sites and buildings, including the oldest house in Sydney, Camden Cottage, which was built in 1816. There are some of the oldest pubs in Sydney. There are loads of galleries and eateries in this area and we found a very interesting food stand that serves Lebanese-Mexican food. Quite and unusual and delicious combination…

Our next stop was Manly Beach. I chuckle every time I say this…there are so many memes we could come up with that would make sense, right? We took a local ferry from Circular Quay to the beach stop and were immediately in a swarm of people mostly under the age of 18 and weighing less than 120 pounds. This beach is obviously where a large percentage of highschoolers go on their summer break (we were in the middle of that timing), and it is understandable why. The beach retail area is filled with surf shops, discount pharmacies, coffee stops, and – of course – ends at a beautiful white sandy beach with a clear blue set of gentle waves to frolic in.

Our extra treat on the way back from the beach visit was at the gelato store with the longest line. We figure that all those gelato fiends couldn’t be wrong so we joined the queue and were rewarded with admittedly yummy sweet treats. “Anita” knows how to do it…

A full day – and much more to come.