Exploring Sydney Part I

Due to falling asleep yesterday and missing the opening times of our bank (they shut at 16:00 here) we decided to get up reasonably early and walk to Chinatown, where our new bank (Commonwealth Bank) was located. We had picked up a variety of maps of Sydney, and as they all seemed to cover different areas better than others, we had to take them all and work from a patchwork of maps. I left the directions to Nicola and we were surprised to find that central Sydney is very walkable. We walked from Potts Point to Chinatown in less than 30 minutes – I realise these places may not mean anything, but on the map of central Sydney Potts Point is to the North East and Chinatown is South West. We made it to the bank and managed to retrieve our bank cards (which was quite exciting despite my account being empty) so that we could access money from the UK. We had arranged before we flew to Australia to open a bank account out here so that when we arrived we only needed to check into our nominated bank and retrieve our cards.

As Nicola and I only had walking shoes and flip flops (or “thongs” as they are called out here) we decided to spend some of our money on cheap casual shoes and conveniently, Paddy’s Markets (one of Sydney’s largest markets) was located opposite our bank. We had a mooch about the market but didn’t really see anything that took our fancy so ended up heading into the mall upstairs where we both bought ourselves nice pairs of daps to walk around in (mine are a denim blue and Nicola’s white if you’re interested for detail). The difference in price between Thailand and Australia was instantly noticeable, what would have cost us around 100baht (£2) in Thailand was priced at $20 (£15) here…we were glad we hit Sydney first as it’s supposedly the most expensive city in Australia, followed shortly by Melbourne, our next destination.

The mall above Paddy's Market... Chinatown!

After exploring Chinatown we headed north east towards Hyde Park for a little look around. According to Lonely Planet it is the “lungs of Sydney”, we assumed they said that because of the shape and location of the park in relation to Sydney CBD (Central Business District is always shortened to CBD out here). The park itself is nice enough, plenty of trees and a few heron-like birds roaming around and also a number of fitness classes for people during lunch breaks and after work. Something noticeable out here, is the amount of people exercising. People jogging, cycling, circuit training in parks and dog walkers everywhere – a nice change. There is a simple, sombre but elegant memorial to the ANZAC soldiers who died during WWII in the centre of Hyde Park which provides a meeting spot or a site to stop and take in your surroundings.

Our impression of Sydney CBD was positive – quite a bit of hustle and bustle but nothing compared to London. You could quite easily stop in the street and admire some of the older buildings or some of the newer highrises without fearing that someone would push or jostle you out of the way. The people seemed a lot calmer too, everything seemed calmer and more relaxed…maybe it’s the sunshine.

We had arranged to meet Oli, a good friend from home, in the CBD later that evening so we had a few hours to kill so we (at my behest) went to the Australian Museum which had as its showpiece exhibition “Deep Sea Monsters”. We paid $17 to get in and headed straight to the Deep Sea Monsters (admission $12 if you wanted to miss out on Deep Sea Monsters). I was pretty excited as it advertised a giant squid…although I couldn’t find the “giant” squid so I guess either it was not that giant, or someone had done a good job hiding it. We did see a variety of stuffed sea creatures and an interesting (to me) take on comparing mythical sea monster drawings to pictures of actual sea creatures (i.e. a drawing of a kraken to a picture of a giant squid…hmmmm, maybe that was the giant squid advertised on the posters!). We also had a womble around the other, permanent exhibitions…birds of Australia (yawn), skeletons of various animals (pretty good, especially a skeleton man riding a skeleton horse), dangerous things in Australia (useful…included a live baby croc although the majority of things were stuffed) and sea life in Australia (pretty interesting again). We didn’t really see the Aboriginal Exhibition until our way out and by that point we were museum-ed out and didn’t bother having a read. Overall, we were not that impressed as most of the exhibitions seemed very outdated – almost like a turn of the 20 Century stuffed animal parlour.

We made our way to meet Oli but on our way stopped to pick up a take away Pizza Hut ($12 for two large pizzas – bargain!). We thought we relax and eat them in Hyde Park. However, we had some unexpected guest. First of all two pigeons turned up, nothing new there, same as home…THEN, two heron-things/eagles turned up, and they kept edging closer…and closer…until we could see in their beady little eyes that they had nothing but bad intentions for our pizzas so I suggested to Nicola that we move (one started creeping behind us to try and take a piece from the box, I’m sure of it). When we had safely retreated we finished our pizzas and waited for Oli.

The view from the ANZAC Memorial - Hyde park

It was nice to see a familiar face and Oli told us how he had been to surfing lessons and various other things in his first week or so as part of his Oz Experience/Intro package he had booked. We relaxed with a Starbucks coffee/hot chocolate for a few hours before Nicola and I had a lovely twilight stroll back through the CBD to our hotel.