Sydney - Day 1

June 7, 2023  •  5 minutes  • 911 words  • Other languages:  Deutsch

Freshly showered on board of an A380 after the exhausting day in Singapore (on which we walked a mere 35,700 steps 🫠), we got a lot more sleep in than on the first flight. The plane took off a little bit later already, because we would have arrived much too early in Sydney due to too much tailwind, but in the end we landed at 10 o’clock local time which was still a little bit earlier than planned.

Arriving at the airport, Mane was worried that he wouldn’t be able to get his wetsuit through customs, since Australia and New Zealand are very strict about importing food and outdoor equipment. Fortunately, he was allowed to keep it, and I was allowed to keep the chips I had bought in Singapore. 😄 At the airport, we then just bought a SIM card for the following week and went off in the direction of downtown. The rest of the day, nothing worth mentioning actually happened, as we slept off the jet lag after arriving at our apartment right next to the central station.

Bondi to Bronte Coastal Walk

The following day we woke up early and decided to drive to Waverley Cemetery in Clovelly to walk the Bondi to Bronte Coastal Walk. The walk is about a 4 km walk from Bondi Beach to Bronte Beach on the coast off Sydney (or the other way around in our case).

With the sunny weather, we quickly noticed that the sun has a lot of power here despite the current “winter” and it is pleasantly warm as well. After we had already passed the first people who put on sunscreen, we have come to the conclusion that we should probably do the same. 😂 To be on the safe side, we had at least an SPF 30 sunscreen with us, which in retrospect has turned out to be a good decision.

Both Bronte and Bondi beaches have such cool rock and ocean pools, built right between the rocks at one end. These are separated from the ocean, but the occasional wave still spills over the edge of the pool. 🌊

Otherwise, on the way to Bondi Beach, we were able to watch some surfers and arrived at our destination just in time for lunch. Since fish & chips are very popular here as a snack, we had to try them of course. In contrast to the fish & chips from England, they tasted very good here. 🤤

Taronga Zoo

Since the day was only half over, we went to the Taronga Zoo on the north side of Sydney Bay. The zoo itself was very nice, even if some enclosures were unfortunately closed or empty, probably because here in winter is just low season. But we still got to see some cute animals. 🥰

Starting with the koalas, who were all curled up sleeping in the trees. With a sleeping time of about 20 hours a day, that wasn’t surprising either. 😅 Awakened by a falling branch, one of the koalas did not seem to look cheerful. Shortly after, however, he curled right back up into a ball and slept on.

Since the Vivid Sydney takes place here currently - a light festival distributed over the whole city - multicolored figures were scattered all over the zoo.

By far the cutest animals were a suuuper soft kangaroo that you got to pet and the red panda that was just gleefully nibbling on his leaves.

The zoo itself is on a slightly higher hill on the north side of the harbor, from which you get a nice view of the city. Since it was already towards evening, we took the bus back to the city center.

Vivid Sydney

After sunset we walked towards the harbor, as there is a drone show there twice a week as part of the Vivid Sydney. With more than 1000 drones, this is supposedly the largest drone show in the southern hemisphere. Actually, we wanted to get on a bridge that leads over the harbor to get a good view from above. Unfortunately, however, this was closed, probably because too many had the same idea. Instead, we got a pretty good spot down below though. The show itself was very cool and was mainly about space, but at the end also a bit about Batman and the DC universe. 🤓

After the drone show, we spent some time looking at the colorfully lit buildings along the Light Walk. Distributed within a distance of nearly 9 km through the whole city center there were different light installations of artists from all over the world.

Some light installations were fixed, others were more dynamic and sometimes told a story.

So our first day in Sydney was already over. After we have already seen the city by night today, we will be looking at it tomorrow by day as well.😃