G'Day Sydney

Day 1
After a 15 hour flight and only 4 hours of sleep on the plane, I landed in Sydney to begin my Australian journey. I left LAX on January 4th at 10:40pm and I landed in Sydney on January 6th at 8:50am, so needless to say I was exhausted when I got out of the airport. After checking into my hostel, Wake Up Sydney, I dropped my bags off in my room and headed to the reception area to go on the free 4 hour walking tour of the city. The guide of the tour was in her early 20s and was born and raised in Sydney so she was very knowledgeable and pointed out good restaurants/ places to see throughout the tour. I was immediately blown away at how clean the city is, I didn’t see one piece of garbage on the ground. After we saw the gardens, china town, darling harbor, the bridge and opera house we grabbed lunch and then went back to the hostel. I went back to the room to relax, shower and meet some of my roommates, I stayed in a 6 person mixed dorm. The hostel had a bar in the basement called SideBar (one of my sister’s favorites when studying in Sydney and how I heard about this hostel) which had activities going on every night. Tonight was free pizza night so I went down with one of the people in my room to eat and mingle with others that were staying in the hostel. The pizza was awful but can’t have high hopes for free pizza in a hostel bar especially being from New York where we have amazing pizza. I managed to keep my eyes open for long enough to chat with some people and then headed up to my room at around 9pm to go to bed. Got a lot more done my first day than I expected and didn’t feel like I lost a day due to jet lag.

Day 2
I woke up the next morning at about 9am and facetimed with my sister Gaby and then grabbed breakfast (brekkie as Australians call it) and a cup of iced coffee before catching the ferry to Manly Beach. The weather has been very humid and pretty cloudy/ smokey with the sun trying to peak out here and there. Not the best beach weather but I was eager to see Manly after hearing such amazing things. The ferry only took about 30 minutes from the circular quay of Sydney and you get great views of the opera house and bridge from the water. Manly is a really nice beach town with cool boutiques and cafes. It’s crazy you can hop on a ferry and be at a gorgeous beach right from the city in such a short amount of time. After some window shopping I grabbed a burger and glass of wine at a restaurant on the water and then laid out on the beach to try and get some sun. After a couple hours of relaxing I took the ferry back to the city and grabbed a couple beers at a brewery called the Munich Brauhaus in The Rocks (a nice neighborhood in Sydney) that my sister and Dad recommended (since they lived in Sydney for several months a few years back). The place was cool, it was like being in Germany with all the staff dressed in lederhosen and live German music playing outside. Anyone who knows me well knows I have a weak spot for good beer with a nice outdoor seating area. It had great happy hour deals too, $10 AUS for 2 beers which is $6.84 USD. I headed back to the hostel and was invited out to a silent disco party at a bar called The Scary Canary by a couple people in my dorm room. This was my first silent disco and I would highly recommend checking one out. You are given headphones and there are 3 channels that you can switch between, each playing a different song and each channel is associated with a different color light. It is hilarious to watch since everyone is singing and dancing to different music. Shockingly enough I was able to beat jet lag and went to bed at 11pm.Read more