DAY 1 SYDNEY
11: 20 pm – We took a Flight 5J40 (Cebu Pac) from Manila to Sydney. The flight was 8 hours long, we slept most of the time but the next morning, we were hungry and we ordered instant hot noodles inflight (which costs 100 pesos). TIP #1: If you are taking the same flight, it is probably best to pre order meals onboard, or bring your own barn for breakfast since this is a long flight. We arrived in Sydney around 10:55 a.m. Our baggage was very late. if you booked an airport service it is best to adjust time of pick up by 2hrs.
We stayed in Yeh’s Hotel Sydney QVB, right in the heart of Sydney Central Business District (Sydney CBD). This building used to be a synagogue and was later renovated to become a hotel. It is situated right across the Queen Victoria Building (QVB) a mall with lots of shops and restaurants.
I am very happy with our hotel location because the light rail is a few steps away (Town House Station), there’s a Woolworth’s grocery store 100 m away, and many sights are a stone’s throw away (This post is not sponsored)
After leaving our baggage in the hotel, we started to look for a place to eat. We decided to walk towards the direction of Sydney harbor: The restaurants are all closed! (Apparently many restaurants close after lunch hours in Sydney and they open again at 5:30 pm). Good thing in George Street, there was McDonalds! I ordered a Chicken salad wrap and some Iced Mocha.
After lunch, we walked along George street and we were able to get a glimpse of the corporate Sydney CBD life. George street is a pedestrianized street where the light rail runs and is rife with shops and tall office buildings. There were men wearing suit and ties, women in heels walking around, interns briefed in the stairs, people are walking fast with suitcases. We walked all the way to Circular quay, and we excitedly had our first glimpse of the Sydney Opera House and the Harbor Bridge.
We first went to the left area called The Rocks. There are many restaurants here but closed for the afternoon. There are also cruise ships docked at this area. We had our pictures taken with the harbor bridge. We also saw violet trees which were called Jacarandas, in full bloom since it is spring (September). Next, we went to the iconic Sydney opera house.
We walked towards the right side of the harbor towards the Sydney Opera House. We took pictures of its iconic pearly white roof, which reminds me of clams of boat sails.. either or, both are perfect with the backdrop of the sea. Tip 2: There is this vantage point where you can get a picture of both the Opera House and the Harbor bridge in one frame.
There is an an activity where you can climb the Harbor bridge for a price (it was 5000 pesos last I looked), but I wasn’t in a climbing mood (even for free) lately, so I let it pass.
I think an Opera House tour would be nice, or maybe catching a show. I looked for tickets for La Traviata, an opera whose The Drinking Song I like, but it wasn’t showing at this time. There is an iconic restaurant under the Sydney Opera House, The Bennelong Bar where you can sit around with friends drinking cocktails with amazing views of the Harbour.
After a long tiring day, we took the light rail (Circular Quay Station) back to our hotel at Town Hall station. I found out later that it is not necessary to buy Opal tickets to ride trains in Sydney, you can just use your credit card to tap in and out.
DAY 2
For Day 2, we The Blue Mountains tour. The Blue mountains are one of the must-sees in Australia. The blue mountains are not really blue in color, but the Eucalyptus trees in the mountain produce oil, that when mixed with air emits a bluish light. It is also home to the famous Three Sisters, three tall rocks that are subject to folk tales. One tale I heard was that the three sisters were being chase by aggressive men that they don’t like, and in order to help them their dad turned them into stones.
The Blue Mountains are about 2 hours out of Sydney, and because I got lazy studying how to get there on my own, and I didn’t want to get lost with Australian wildlife, I decided to just book a tour bus with FJ tours. From our hotel, we walked towards Park harbour hotel where the bus will be picked us up. Many of the tour buses pick up from this point (I knew because there were many tour buses before our tour bus arrived).
Our first stop is the Cahill’s Lookout (Near Katoomba). The grass was taller than I was.
Our next stop is the Featherdale Wildlife Park Sydney. Take this, you can really interact with the animals here. You can feed the kangaroos, wallabies and there is even an area where you can have a photo taken with the koala. My tip is that don’t be so amazed by the wallaby encounter at the first part that you spend a lot of time there, when there are really great creatures to encounter way ahead. We ate brunch at the canteen and I had the famous Mrs Macs beef Pie.
Next we went to see Leura’s point where there are many shops around. We chose not to go down here and instead go to see the Scenic world, where you could find the steepest railway in the world. There are three main rides in the Scenic world, there’s the Railway, Cableway and Skyway. I will be creating a different post for a scenic world to prevent information overload. It was in the Scenic world were we were able to take pictures of The three sisters.
After scenic world, we went to Echo point where we took even closer views of the Three Sisters. The closest we had, then it started raining.
The bus dropped us off the parramatta ferry station and asked us to ride back to Circular Quay. Of course from circular quay we took the light rail to Town Hall Station. We ate japanese food for dinner.
When she gets lost 