Fly me to Sydney … ;)

Garuda Indonesia in flight entertainment

What do you usually feel when you’re going to visit a place for the first time?

Excited, right?

Yes, that’s what I felt on the departure day to Sydney for myself and my friend, Yudhi. We took the red eye flight, so we arrived in Sydney in the morning, at 9:30AM (supposedly we arrived at 10:30AM, but Garuda Indonesia decided to move the flight earlier, and that’s a good thing ;)).

Thought I was going to have a good night sleep during this 6 hours flight, in fact I only slept for about 3 hours. Then I couldn’t sleep anymore, well probably only a very light sleep. Luckily for long-haul in Garuda Indonesia flight, they provide in-flight entertainment, and they have loads of movies. I remembered that I watched The Four (a Chinese kung-fu movie with English subtitle :D), some short movies, and Pitch Perfect (which I couldn’t finish as we’re going to arrive soon).

Sunrise! 🙂

So here I was … In the land of down under for the first time 😀

We have set the plan for our first day, from doing the walking tour in 1:30PM, and watching movie in IMAX in the afternoon. IMAX? In Sydney? Well, yes … According to Yudhi, Sydney has the largest IMAX in the world. So why would we pass watching in it?! 🙂

With only 3 hours of sleep in the flight, we dragged our suitcase from the immigration counter, to train station, and boarded the train.

The train in Sydney is unique. It’s like a double-decker bus, but this one is a train 😀

Train in Sydney

…

Sydney Harbour YHA has two train stations that are close to it, one is in Wynyard, and the closest one is Circular Quay (near the harbor). Although Circular Quay is closer to YHA comparing to Wynyard, but walking from the station to YHA involves many stairs, and that’s not a good thing when you drag luggage with you. So Wynyard then! 😀

According to Google Maps, it’s a 700m walk. It’s quite a long walk at first, it seemed that I wasn’t going to reach there at any time soon lol. But, I was getting used to it. It’s really a great exercise, and it lets me appreciate the surrounding more. There are many buildings and churches, which still keep their old style architecture. Even more, YHA is located in the heritage area of The Rocks. I could see many old houses around the YHA, plus the archaeological site.

St. Patrick Catholic Church at Grosvenor st.

Pre-wedding photography in Susannah Place – The Rocks area in Sydney, Australia

Indomie goreng in Sydney 😮

Although not many eating places and shops around our hostel, but there’s one convenience store that surprisingly sold Indomie (it’s an instant noodle which is originally from Indonesia haha!). Isn’t it a perfect choice for breakfast?! Haha .. yes it was … We ate Indomie or even instant cup noodle for our breakfast every day lol!

We arrived early in the YHA, so they couldn’t check us in yet. Humm where should we do to kill the time?

We decided to visit the Sydney Visitor Centre to see tour provider that provided tour to Blue Mountains. We of course chose the cheapest one which we thought already covered a lot of things in the tour ;). It is also important to ask the weather forecast to decide the day of the tour because Blue Mountains Tour is an outdoor activity.

Apparently, around the Sydney Visitor Centre in The Rocks area, there are quite a few options of eating places and a market with a few of food stalls and clothing stalls (we only saw the food stalls on Saturday). Even when we walked from the hostel to this area, we could see quite a few of restaurants, bar, café, plus many high-class shops and a mall in George Street.

Shops at George st – The Rocks, Sydney

Markets at The Rocks, Sydney

Patrick James, one of the street performers, at The Rocks market, Sydney

..

After we got our lunch in the nearby B&B restaurant, we just felt so tired, and there’s no way we continued with our plan to do a 3-hour walking tour. Yikes! We then just went back to the hostel to rest for a while and get ready for afternoon movie in IMAX 🙂

IMAX in Sydney is located in Darling Harbor area, so we could catch the train from Circular Quay station that is located in Sydney Harbor area to Town Hall station and then continue with a short walk to the IMAX theatre.

But before we walked to Circular Quay station, we didn’t want to miss taking picture with Sydney Harbor Bridge and Sydney Opera House which can be seen from Sydney Harbor! Haha. It seemed that every time we saw Sydney Harbor Bridge and Sydney Opera House, we always took pictures of them lol. They are just ‘objects’ that can’t be ignored haha. Well, you will see many pictures of them later on the next posts 😀

Sydney Opera House

Sydney Harbor Bridge and a cruise ship

Another cruise ship in Sydney Harbor

One thing that I also notice when going to Sydney Harbor is the cruise ship. Every time we visited the harbor, the cruise ship was different with the one that we saw a day or two days before! This cruise ship reminds me of the Titanic, which made me automatically look at their life boat 😮 I saw a very good lifeboat which shaped like a submarine (hyperbaric lifeboat), and it could accommodate plenty of people inside. Nice one!

So okey dokey then, we hopped on the train to Town Hall station!

…

PS: the sky was a bit gloomy during our first-two days in Sydney, and thankfully we could see the blue sky on our third day 🙂

Sydney Visitor Centre >> http://www.shfa.nsw.gov.au/sydney-For_visitors-Sydney_Visitor_Centres.htm

…

If you like this post, please share it 🙂

…

My Australia trip series:

• It’s Australia, mate!
• IMAX and that giant rubber duck in Darling Harbour!
• Sydney Opera House: A tour …
• Sydney Opera House: A show called La Soirée …
• Visiting Taronga Zoo in Sydney
• Bondi or Manly??
• A walking tour in Sydney

Accommodation: Sydney Harbour YHA