v.longweekend

Day 2 – Sunday, 1 June 2008

2008-08-28T08:12:00.000-07:00

We woke up to the smell of frying sausages and eggs, nice and fresh. After washing up, we sat down at the dinning table to have breakfast.

We left our apartment at around 8.30a.m. and strolled to the Central Station. Breakfree on George is really within walkable distance to the Central Station after all! We only took 5 minutes to get there. We started on our first day of using the 3-day Sydney Pass. We took a train from the Central Station to Circular Quay Station.
Upon alighting at the Circular Quay Station, we found ourselves staring at the magnificent view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House. The itch to take photos came again and we soon found ourselves snapping away at the train platform even before stepping out of the station!

Sydney Harbour Bridge

Sydney Opera House

Once out of the station, we found ourselves surrounded by many street performers, who are out on their weekly performance to present their best tricks and stunts to earn a living.

The weather was not as good as the day before. The sky was overhanging with dark clouds, threatening to rain cats and dogs over us any moment. The photos we took looked a little gloomy with the grey skies as their background

Gloomy sky!

Our first stop was The Rocks Markets at The Rocks. Traditionally the home of the Indigenous Cadigal people, the rocky sandstone ledge now known as The Rocks is where members of the First Fleet stepped ashore on 26 January 1788 and British settlement of Australia was first established.
Now, it is nothing like the rocky shoreline that gave its name. It has transformed into a historic town centre, nestled between the Sydney Harbor Bridge and Sydney Opera House. Walking down the charming cobblestone walkways, we arrived at The Rocks Market. The first thing that caught our eye was a stall selling Lush Berries. What are Lush Berries? They are nothing but big red juicy strawberries dipped in and decorated with different types of chocolate. Though costly, they looked so delicious that we could not resist splurging A$3 to try one! The Lush Berry that we chose was lavishly coated with milk chocolate and sprinkled with almond bits. It looked so nice that couldn’t bear to eat it. After taking many photos with it, we finally settled down to eat it. It tasted quite nice, but not fantastic enough for us to spend another A$3! ^_^

Lush Berries!

We visited each of the stalls in the market to check out what each stall have to offer. The things sold there are quite unique and covered a wide variety of items. Practically, the things sold at each stall are different. Most of the items sold there are handmade or homemade. The items sold ranged from food products to accessories. We bought some homemade soft nougat. The nougat is quite different from the usual hard nougat that we see in the supermarkets. The flavors are quite unique too. We bought all 3 available flavors, cranberry and pistachio flavor, chocolate flavor and another flavor that I don’t quite remember.All was well until we came to this stall selling scarves. The scarves are pretty unique; they are sewed in a special way that allowed us to tie it in various different styles. An Australian lady was manning the stall. She was demonstrating patiently to two Caucasians tourists. There was a piece of paper framed in a photo frame showing the different methods of tying the scarf. Feeling interested, we stopped to take a look. The English lady was halfway through the demonstration when she spotted us standing by the side. She gave us an annoying look and suddenly slammed the framed picture down before turning back to the English tourists with a big smile and continuing her demonstration. We were all perplexed with her weird behavior. It suddenly dawned me that she didn’t want us to see her drawn demonstration. It so happened that my sister was holding on to her video camera while watching the demonstration. We figured that she probably thought that we were recording her demonstration. After realizing what happened, we tried to explain ourselves that we are not filming and are really interested in the demonstration. However, the Australian lady was so adamant that we are up to no good and was very rude to us. We were really put off by her attitude. Perhaps it is because we are Asians, and she thought Asians are inferior to Caucasians?? Whatever it is, our good spirits were already dampened and she had lost herself 2 potential customers. But other than this unpleasant encounter, the other stall owners are very friendly and amiable.

The Convict - Australia was once a 'disposal land' for Bristish criminals.

The Settlers

We only managed to finish exploring The Rocks Market when its time to catch the 1pm ferry to Manly Beach for the annual Manly Food and Wine Festival. The Rocks has so much more to offer – from twisting alleys lined with interesting shop houses to beautiful historical buildings, it was a pity that we did not have the luxury to explore it.

The ferry to Manly was quite big. It has two levels and one deck at the front of the ferry where you can sit out in the wind and enjoy the magnificent view as the ferry cruised along. We had wanted to sit at the deck. But, as everyone is fighting to sit on the deck, by the time we made our way up to the deck, there was no place for us to sit. This was, in a way, a good thing too, as the wind that blew was so biting cold that we could hardly bear to stand in the open deck for more than 5 seconds. We hurriedly took a few pictures and gladly squeezed back into the warm interior of the ferry.

Ferry to Manly

Very soon, we docked at Manly Wharf. We followed the swarm of people out of the ferry and onto the lands of Manly Island. Manly was nothing like what I have imagined. I had imagined it to be a deserted natural beach that is sparsely populated except for a few restaurants and resorts in the background. But what greeted us was totally different. Manly looks like a well-develop town with rows of shop houses lining the streets. We had to walk through the long stretch of shops and restaurants before we manage to catch a glimpse of the beach.

Though a little disappointed, it did not stop us from looking forward to the Manly Food and Wine Festival.

The Manly Food and Wine Festival is an annual event whereby Manly’s landmark wineries and restaurants gather to showcase their fine range of international cuisines. Visitors can enjoy a range of different cuisine for up to A$12 per plate. Wine can also be purchased from each winery at A$5 per glass.

As we made our way to the Manly Food and Wine Festival, we saw many people walking about with wine glasses hanging on neck straps off their necks. We can sense that we are nearing the festival location. Sure enough, within the next minute, loud and lively music drifted into our ears and right in front of us, booths of delicious looking food and nice smelling wine filled our sight. It’s like a school carnival!

We strolled along the long stretch of booths, checking out the different kinds of food offered by the booths. Finally, we stopped at one of the stalls with the longest queue. It is a booth manned by a group of university students. They are selling some kind of seafood fried rice with raisins (like the rice you get when u order seafood platter in Fish & Co). The rice is so aromatic that we can’t help but join the queue. One plate of rice costs you A$10 – a little overpriced if you ask me – but it still tasted quite good. As we were too hungry, we gobbled up the whole plate of rice before remembering that we forgot to take a photo of it!After eating the seafood rice, it started to drizzle a bit. We took shelter in the nearby shops. The plate of seafood rice was not really enough for the 4 of us and we were still famished. As we are not really wine lovers and the food offered at the festival is really a bit overpriced, we decided to venture to the restaurants in search of more good food.

We found this restaurant called Watervue that looked quite decent. We went in and ordered a salt and pepper calamari as starters. The calamari is quite different from the one we ate at East Ocean yesterday – it did not have a crumby layer over it and it tasted fresh and juicy. We also ordered some rock oysters, which tasted fresh but was quite saltish.

Salt and Pepper Calamari

Rock Oysters

Rock salt - Inedible, For decoration only!

For main course, we ordered a fish and chips and a chicken. The fish and chips tasted yummy but the chicken was a bit dry as they used chicken breast. We realized that Australians like chicken breast meat in their dishes, perhaps for health purposes? I really missed the nice juicy thigh meat when I was there!

Fish and Chips - It taste different from Singapore's.

It might be due to the batter and the fish, but its nice!

Dry Chicken-breast cutlet

For drinks, we tried this alcoholic drink called Citrus Bitch. It is a mixture of vodka, lime and orange. It sounded quite yummy, but when it was served, we took and sip and were dismayed to find that the drink tasted bitter, as they have put the fruits in without removing the skins! Perhaps the drink would have tasted much better if they removed the skins?!

Citrus Bitch

After the filling meal, it’s photo-taking time! We went back to the Manly Beach at The Corso to take photos of the beautiful beach. While looking for someone to take a group photo for us, we met this funny guy at the beach. He was hanging around with his friends. When we asked if he could help us to take a photo, he exclaimed happily that he was hoping that we would asked him for help and he is really glad that we did. That guy was hilarious, he even prompted us do a “funny face” pose, and for once, Dad actually looked smiley!

After the photo taking, we started making our way back. We wanted to catch the 4.45pm ferry back to Sydney so that we are in time to enjoy the sunset on the ferry, which is around 5pm. However, as usual, we were delayed by some ‘interesting stuffs’ along the way. We passed by a Diaso-like shop houses and starting shopping again. Dad and I finished shopping first and waited outside the store. While waiting, we saw a dog owner leading a big black poodle dog right up to the road block besides us, tied the dog onto the road block before going off to shop. The dog was quite tamed and waited there quietly. We couldn’t resist but spent another few moments taking a photo with it.

Nice tamed poodle

By the time we reached the jetty, the ferry has already left. It was quite a disappointment for us, because the sun would already have set when the next ferry comes along. But, since we already missed the ferry to see the sunset, we decided to go back and take more photos at Manly Wharf! After taking photos, we still had some time before the next ferry comes. We made use of the free time to make calls to Quad Bike King and Imagine Cruise (Whale watching) to confirm the activities for our Port Stephens trip. While making the calls at the jetty, some drunken guys loitered nearby, shouting and tumbling all over the place. Guessed they must have had too much to drink at the Food and Wine Festival!

The sky was already darkening when we got onto the ferry. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing to miss the ferry, as the sky was too overcast to see any sunset anyway.. On the ferry, we met this old lady who was traveling alone. She seemed very interested to strike a conversation with us. She told us that she used to go to Manly with her husband and children, just like us. But now, her children are all grown up and have their own families. And recently, her husband passed away. So now, she has to go there alone. She seemed very lonely, and we tried to respond as much as we could. But soon, we succumbed to our tiredness and drifted off to sleep. By the time we woke up, we are already reaching the Sydney Harbour. The sky is totally dark now, and the rain is pelting quite heavily. It was only 5.30p.m! We had wanted to go back to The Rocks to continue exploring the historical monuments there, and then have dinner at Opera Bar, a nice little bar near the Sydney Opera House. But the big rain and strong winds turned us off. Winter is really not the best time to visit Sydney.

Instead, we went back to our apartment to unload the stuff we bought at The Rocks and went to a nearby Chinese restaurant. We went to this place called BBQ King for some authentic Cantonese roasted meat. The food there is real yummy and the helping is real big! We ate to our hearts’ content!

Nice 'Shao la', Superb!

It was still raining cats and dogs after dinner. We decided to go back to our apartment and have an early rest so that we can wake up earlier the next day.

2008-07-23T08:08:00.000-07:00

A search on Google returned the following caption – there is no place in the world like Sydney.

Indeed, Sydney is definitely one unique place that we have never regretted setting our foot upon. This is a real-life documentation of a 9-day free-and-easy tour in Sydney and beyond.

We hope that through this blog, you can gain a better understanding of Sydney.

We chose our first visit to Sydney during the winter-time because, as Singaporeans, we don’t have the chance to experience winter in Singapore. So whenever we can, we try to experience winter in other countries, so that we can escape the all-year hot and humid weather in Singapore.

We started planning for the Sydney trip 2 months well before the trip. This is absolutely necessary if you are traveling with your family, especially if you are traveling with elderly parents who are not used to traveling without a guide and do not really understand the joy of getting lost in a strange land and stumbling upon unexpected gems in places that are not commonly publicized to tourists on travel guides but, too, are worth visiting.

However, this is not to say that being well-prepared means that everything will go as planned, as you can see in our documentary that follows. This is, after all, a free-and-easy tour, where you expect things to go wrong. This goes out to the faint-hearted: do not go on a free-and-easy tour unless you can take it.

So, if you think you are ready, here we go!

.......... Day 1

Day 1 – Saturday, 31 May 2008

2008-07-22T06:11:00.000-07:00

Upon touching down at Kingsford Smith Airport, we spotted some differences between Sydney’s airport and Singapore’s airport.

In Sydney, if you are traveling in family, you can go through the immigration together – you just need tell to the immigration staff that you are a family, and they will let up go through the customs together. Unlike in Singapore, only when a child is traveling with the parent are they allowed to go through the customs together. Else, it is one-by-one, and everyone has to stand behind the line and wait for their turn. Although this is just a simple act, but it truly displayed the Aussies’ pro-family attitude. Not only does this makes going through the immigration a little less boring, it also saves the queuing time of big families traveling together – definitely a plus-point!

You can also find Australian Customs and Agricultural officer with ‘sniffer dogs’ patrolling around the airport’s baggage area, sniffing at your bags and even at YOU in their attempt to detect illegal drugs or food stuff. Now, even if you are not exactly a dog lover, there is nothing much to be afraid of. These dogs are nothing like the fierce-looking police patrol dogs that you see in the movies. These dogs are much more tamed and ranged over all sorts of species, from cockle spaniels to even Chihuahuas! Indeed, it looked more like the officers are walking their dogs in the airport itself! It was quite an interesting sight to humor yourself with while waiting for your baggage.

In the toilets of the Sydney Airport, we also found something interesting. In the cubicles, there are yellow metallic boxes installed at the corner labeled ‘contaminated waste - sharps only’. These boxes are installed for users to discard their used needles and syringes for hygiene purposes. We later learned that such boxes are also found in many public toilets around Australia. We didn't know that self-injection is so common in Australia that such boxes are required!

Contaminated waste - sharps only

Once we got out of the customs and collected our baggage, we headed out to the arrival hall. As it was a Saturday, the airport was packed with people. We made our way through the crowd, trying to find our way to the Cityrail station, where we can purchase our tickets to take the Airportlink to the Central Station, where our apartment is.

Along the way, we passed by a Vodafone stall, where we stopped to purchase a rechargeable prepaid calling card that can be used to call within and out of Australia.

The prepaid calling card is a must-have if you are on a free-and-easy trip as it is a cheaper means of making local calls, which you do very often as you have to confirm your bookings, make queries, or do some last-minute arrangements. It also gives you more convenience in the sense that you can call from anywhere you want – in the car, on the streets, when you lost your way or got into difficult situations and need help and so on. You can also use this card to make and receive overseas calls from your home country. Thus, buying a calling card is definitely one of the first things you must do when you go on a road trip.

Please check with the vendor on what promotions they have for the calling card. When we were there, there was an offer going on – pay A$28 and get a calling card with A$128 value – quite value for money. And this is definitely sufficient for a 9-day trip – we made several local and overseas calls during the trip and on the last day, we still had enough value left to call back to Singapore and chat with our friends for as long as 30 minutes! One thing to note though, the card can only be activated within 24 hours of registration. Which means you can only start using it on the 2nd day of your arrival. So if you need to make any calls on the first day, you might need to use the pay phones or the phone in your apartment or hotel.

Vodafone sim card

After getting the calling card, we proceeded to the passenger lift on the far right to get to basement, where the Cityrail ticketing office is located. Outside the ticketing office, you can find some pamphlets with information on the different travel pass packages available for tourists. You can also find some information on the places of attractions in Sydney there. We bought the 3-day Sydney pass at the ticketing office. The Sydney pass costs us A$100 per person. If you buy the Sydney pass at the airport ticketing office, you get an additional return trip on the Airportlink, which means your transportation to and from the airport will now be all covered. For more information on transportation in Sydney, click here. You can also use this to plan you trip.

Sydney Pass

We waited for about 8 minutes at the station platform before the Airportlink train arrived. The train was quite comfortable. There are 3 levels on the train. When we entered the train at the 2nd level, there are two flights of stairs, one leading to the upper level and the other leading to the lower level. You can choose whether to stay at the 2nd level or to move to the other levels. As we are loaded with baggage, and our destination was only 6 stations away, we decided to stay put at the 2nd level, since there are seats available. The train has a electronic scrolling text marquee display installed on every cabin, which tells the passengers which station they are at and the names of the other stations following it, which is really useful as it allow the passengers to know when they should start lugging at their luggage towards the exit so that by the time the train reach their station, they can get out in time.

The 3 levels Airportlink train

After about 15 minutes, we arrived at the Central Station. Unlike the International Airport Station, which is underground, this station is ‘open-air’, allowing us to catch our first glimpse of the Sydney city.

Central Station - our first glimpse of Sydney city

We loaded our luggage and ourselves into the one and only passenger lift at the far right end of the platform to get to the ticket concourse level.

Once out of the station, we tried to look for taxi stands to get a cab to our apartment. We couldn’t find one and had to flag down a cab along the road. We told the driver that we wanted to go to Breakfree on George, the name of the apartment that we will be staying at during our stay in Sydney. The helpful driver told us that the place is actually within walkable distance and we didn’t have to waste the money to take a cab down. A nice first impression of a Sydney-sider.

However, as we have a lot of luggage with us and we don’t really know the route, we still decided to take the cab. We reached the apartment in less than 5 minutes. Our apartment was located on George Street, in the middle of a stretch of shops.

The location of the apartment was quite good – it is very near Chinatown, where shops open till quite late at night, unlike the other Aussie shops, which closed for the day at around 6 or 7pm. Other attractions, like the Paddy’s Market and the Darling Harbour, are also within walking distance.

The apartment itself was quite cosy too. We chose to stay in a one-bedroom apartment instead of a studio apartment so as to give our parents some privacy. The apartment has 2 queen-sized beds, one in the bedroom, and one in the living room. It also comes with a tv that shows various local programs; two bathrooms with bathtubs, towels and hairdryers; a fully equipped kitchenette with microwave and bar fridge; 2 single-seat couches and a round dinning table that can sit 4 people.

Spacious bathroom . Dining area . Queen-sized bed. Kitchenette

We chose to stay in an apartment rather than in a hotel or a hostel because an apartment gives us the feeling of coming home in a foreign land, especially if we are going to stay there for some time. Staying in an apartment also gives us a chance to experience how it is like to live in a foreign country. We can go shopping for grocery in the supermarkets and cook our own meals. We can stock up our fridge with snacks of all sorts that we can use to fill our stomachs with when staying up late to play games or watch some interesting shows. The apartment also provides broadband access, self-service laundry services, room service and lockers for luggage storage at an affordable fee.

One bad thing about the apartment is the view – we don’t really have much view from our 3rd floor apartment window; the window overlooked the dirty back alley and the only thing we can see is the window of the building opposite us. Our conclusion is, perhaps if we have requested for an apartment on a higher floor, the view would have been much better.
Also, the apartment does not have its own car park. This might pose some inconvenience to those who chose to self-drive within Sydney. However, the apartment does offer subsidized parking at the nearby car parks, so this is really not much of a problem.

While walking around, we saw that there is another hostel located just opposite the Central Station, called the Sydney Central YHA. YHA is a chain of back-packer hostels that can be found all over Australia and many other countries. We stayed in one of the branch at Blue Mountains during the trip and had a good experience there. YHA members are given special rates when they stay at the YHA hostel. You can find more information on Sydney Central YHA here.

After check-in, it was already near to lunch time. Spurred by our rumbling stomachs, we left our apartment in search of good food. Another good thing about staying in Chinatown – you can find nice Chinese food around every corner! Most of the restaurants serve delicious Cantonese food, which really delight our non-western-food-eating parents. We practically had Chinese food for every meal there! We had our lunch at the East Ocean Restaurant directly opposite our apartment, which serves yummy dim sum at an affordable price – about A$4.50 to A$6.50 per serving, with each serving enough to fill 4 persons’ stomachs. We loved the fried calamari there - it is much better than Fish and Co. We were really surprised to find that the locals like dim sum a lot too!

Yummy calamari from East Ocean Restaurant

After eating, we strolled across the street to the Paddy’s Markets, opened only 4 days a week (every Thursdays to Sundays). As it was a Saturday, the place was crowded. The Paddy’s market looks a lot like the pasar malam stalls that you can find in Singapore. There were stalls selling things from accessories and clothing to fresh vegetables and fruits. We spent about 2 hours there, immersing ourselves in the Aussie marketing culture. The whole market was bustling with action. All around, we can see animated conversations between haggling customers and adamant stall owners. We had our own share of fun when we tried out our marketing skills. We bought some white mushrooms, apples and golden kiwis.

Paddy's Market - consist of a wholesale fruit/vege market and a clothes/accessories market

Past the fountain was an impressive, tiled, fig lined road called the Avenue of Fig. We took some pictures at the Avenue of Fig before crossing over the road, back into the bustling city. Again our shooting skills did not do the Hyde Park justice. You can find more beautiful photos of Hyde Park here.

We found our way back to George Street by foot and since we were already on George Street, we decided to walk back to our apartment.

As a matter of interest, George Street is the first proper street on Sydney. It started out as a bullock track from one end of Sydney to the other.

On our way back, we passed by Woolworth, one of the major hypermarkets in Australia. We decided to go in to buy some foodstuff to cook for dinner. We bought some instant noodles, sausages, eggs, milk, cereal, bread, yogurt and snacks. We had to drag our feet to carry all the foodstuff back to the apartment.

Back at the apartment, we started cooking the instant noodles with eggs - a cosy dinner =). We finished the meal with yogurt mixed with bits of the kiwi and apples.

Exhausted from the long day, we crawled into bed after bath and drifted off to sleep within minutes.

.......... Day 2