Our Sydney visit was short and sweet! Not wanting to blow our budget we found a few excellent free and cheap ways to enjoy Sydney! Here is a quick recap of our week. We stayed at a quaint AirBnB in Potts Point, a trendy little neighbourhood with tons of eats and drinks to enjoy and a great night life at Kingscross. This was by far the least expensive way to stay in a good location in Sydney with hotels starting at $200 a night. Having a full kitchen and washer dryer also helped us keep costs down by cooking most of our meals. From our AirBnB we were able to walk most of the city. We started by taking the classic walk through the Royal Botanical gardens, along the sea wall until you turn the corner and get the full view of Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. It's a good 45 minute walk and well worth it for the views. The Royal Botanical Gardens are incredible, an excellent place for a romantic walk or picnic. We were lucky to be here in October/November and catch the Jacaranda Trees in full bloom offering beautiful blue flowering trees lining city streets. The gardens are also home to beautiful looking (mind you awful sounding) cockatoos and the even more beautiful Rainbow Lorikeet. We continued walking all the way to the Opera House and got a good close up. It's a marvelous building looking like huge orange wedges carefully balanced against one another. You can pay a good sum to get an insiders tour or catch a show. We chose to pass on this opportunity and instead sat on the harbour overlooking the bridge and Opera House with a beer. The sea side restaurants aren't cheep with $9.00 beers but it's worth one so you can sit and take in the sights and sounds. Watch out for seagulls if you order food however, they're fearless and will seize any opportunity to steal your meal! Another day we strolled through Hyde Park which is a nice escape in the city centre with beautiful gardens, next to St. Mary's Cathedral. Hyde Park has fun cafes and an over-sized chess board which we caught a group of older people playing an intense game that had drawn a good sized crowd. If you continue walking past Hyde park it'll lead you to Darling Harbour which is another incredible area for soaking in the sun. The harbour has something for everyone with restaurants, a children's park, Chinese Garden and Maritime Museum. Around the corner from Darling Harbour is Paddy's Market which is a massive warehouse of booths offering everything imaginable. You can also visit the Fish Market and get a catch of the day and a great meal, if you can find it that is! It's not actually hard to find we just happened to fail miserably during our walk about to pin it down. Our favorite day was spent on Manly Beach. It's a 30 minute ferry ride from Circular Quay near the Opera House and well worth it! When you land in Manly Harbour it's an easy 10 minute walk to the beach down a street lined with shops and snack stops. We chilled on the beach watching beginner surfers struggle to stand and soaked in the sun. Once the sun left us we hit a beach side bar for another $9.00 beer before taking the return ferry. It's a beautiful little town and an excellent day trip from Sydney!
All in all we loved our time in Sydney and have every intention of coming back to Australia one day to see it in more depth. Sydney is not the most budget friendly place we'll visit in the 8 months we're traveling but the people were kind, the weather was great and lots of cheap and easy things to keep us busy made it an excellent few days!
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