A week in Sydney 2023

We spent several weeks in Sydney last year, so on this trip we just revisited a few favourite places and sights.

We arrived in Australia the 24th July and spent a week in Melbourne, then flew to Proserpine to spend a week in the Whitsundays for a week where we visited the Great Barrier Reef, then onto Sydney for a week, 2 days in the Hunter Valley, 3 nights in Nelson Bay followed by our last 3 nights on Bondi Beach. We fly home via 4 nights in Kuala Lumpur.

Our son, Jamie, often referred to as child 3, collected us from the airport and took us to the accommodation near his home.

There was good access into the city

and despite being under the flight path, it was relatively quiet.

Our first port of call with Sydney Harbour, followed by coffee, lunch then back home

The local supermarket was a short walk away, with this wonderful graffiti commissioned on the front of shops/businessess

We spent a whole day in Sydney. Peter went to watch Oppenheimer and I wandered around the shops

The Queen Victoria building is stunning inside. I didn't buy anything, just browsed the high end stores

There are also several shopping arcades in the city that are well worth a visit.

 

I love how they light all the buildings up as night falls

We took a walk over the Sydney Harbour Bridge. operation Malabar was in full swing, with representative ships from Japan, The USA and India joining forces with Australia for a training exercise.

We found some lovely parks, coffee shops and explored harbours as we walked around Kirribilli.

Lovely to see the Magnolia in blossom, strange having seen it already in the UK in Spring.

There were fabulous views of Sydney.

Lovely little picnic areas

Strange looking trees

and random birds.

I'm not sure I'd find the entrance to Luna Park inviting as a small child, quite frightening

The streets of Sydney are full of these Ibis which the locals refer to a 'Bin Chickens' and are considered a nuisance 

We went to the Alianz stadium on Saturday to watch The Roosters play The Dolphins

And caught the train back.

I love these trains they're double deckers and you can adjust the seats for either front or rear facing.

We're back in Sydney next week in Bondi Beach and will be exploring the coast line around there.

We walked from Bondi to Watson Bay and caught the ferry back into Sydney, the views were gorgeous and we saw whales and dolphins from our walk.

The area was full of these rainbow lorikeets.

There's so much more to see and do in Sydney than we've done on this trip but I'm not here as a travel guide, just merely to share my travels with you.

Week 34 One Daily Positive and Project 365. Australia, Malaysia and Home

Last few days in Australia and saying goodbye to child 3 not knowing when we'll see him again, he's not planning on returning to the UK and has made himself a good life out there.

Malaysia was very hot and muggy around 27c all year round. It rained every afternoon, but it was very welcomed. It took us until day 2 to work out how to get around, work out the time difference (we lost 2 hours after a 9 hour flight) and the local currency called Ringitt.

We flew home on Saturday leaving an hour late due to rain, thunder and lightening. The flight lasted 13 hours and we lost 7 hours and arrived in Heathrow at 6pm. Our luggage came straight off the belt and the car was waiting for us, hit took 2 and a half hours to get home. 

233 Sunday A visit to Palm beach north of Sydney where they film Home and Away.

234 Monday Train and ferry to Manly to meet up with Jamie and walk along the coast. This Diamond Python was in the tree above the footpath, it was about 2ms long.

235 Tuesday Jamie collected our luggage back to his and Peter and I walked from Bondi Beach to Coogee. A Facebook memory told us we'd were doing the same walk in reverse the same time last year. We caught the bus into Sydney, walked round the Opera House one last time. Jamie took us to the airport.

236 Wednesday We were delayed by over an hour leaving Sydney. We arrived at our hotel at 9am and were able to drop the bags there after freshening up. We hardly slept and it was a long time to fill until check in at 2.30pm, there was no option of an early check in, I wish we'd booked the room for the night before. We explored the local area, had coffee and then lunch. After check in, we swam in the roof top pool, showered, changed and headed out on the train to the local street food markets.

237 Thursday We spent the morning at Batu Caves and climbed the stairs to the top and in the caves, it was stunning. In the afternoon we visited a bird park and a butterfly park and in the evening, back to the markets for dinner.

238 Friday Our last full day, we walked to the Kuala Lumpur Tower where we had amazing views of the city. I've been higher in the Burj Khalifa and the CN Tower in Canada. There are different categories for Worlds Tallest Tower and Buildings. We had great fun in the upside down house, Peter was very patient with me taking the photos and working out different poses.

239 Saturday Up at 4.30am, check out, taxi and plane delayed by 90 minutes. Air Malaysia put us in night mode for the 13 hour flight, despite it being a day time flight, west. The food was awful, some of the crew were really dismissive and the plane was cold, we ended up putting jumpers on and wrapping blankets around us.

The cat and dog were very happy to see us when we got home around 9.30pm, around 24 hours since we left Kuala Lumpur.

On the blog this week:

Wine tasting in the Hunter Valley

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Post Comment Love 25-28th August 2023

Welcome back to #pocolo with Stephanie from Lifeat139a and I.

Post Comment Love #PoCoLo is a friendly weekly linky where you can link up any blog post you've written this week and all we ask is that you leave a comment on either mine or Stephanie's post which you linked up through and at least one other post. We'd also love it if you could RT us on Twitter when we tag you to help us reach a wider audience.

I'll be catching up with reading your posts, sharing and commenting over the weekend.

We arrived in Kuala Lumpur after 4 weeks in Australia on Wednesday at 7am and couldn't check into our hotel until 3pm, so we dropped the bags and headed out on foot to get some breakfast. it was so hot and humid. As soon as we were in our room, we headed straight to the pool, then out to dinner.

Thursday we visited Batu Caves

Today we are off to the KL Tower and then home on Saturday. 

We've been away since July 23rd, I'll need a holiday to recover.

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Wine Tasting in the Hunter Valley

We arrived in Australia the 24th July and spent a week in Melbourne, then flew to Proserpine to spend a week in the Whitsundays for a week where we visited the Great Barrier Reef, then onto Sydney for a week, 2 days in the Hunter Valley, 3 nights in Nelson Bay followed by our last 3 nights on Bondi Beach. We fly home via 4 nights in Kuala Lumpur.

Our son organised the accommodation and this part of our trip to The Hunter Valley, about 90 minute drive outside of Sydney.

We spent 2 nights there and a day touring vineyards and wineries.

The wine and cheese tasting was around $5 a head and we sampled around 5-6 wines at each place. I was the designated driver, so I sniffed and sipped only and enjoyed my fair share of the cheese tasting, which also sold delicious fudge and chocolates, which we bought along with several bottles of wine.

View from our accommodation

Cheese tasting

Lunch stop

I bought a kangaroo wearing a Santa hat for the Christmas tree. We buy something for the tree on each trip.

Vine yard

Wine tasting.

Kangaroo outside our front door.

 Our accommodation.

Stopped for lunch at a pole dancing club.