Aussie/Thai Boy 101: Sydney, New South Wales

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Sydney, New South Wales

I just arrived in Sydney yesterday morning, and weirdly enough, it has been my least favorite place on my excursion through Australia. Don’t get me wrong though – Sydney is an amazing city, but there just really wasn’t as much to do as in the other cities.

Sydney is a lot like Melbourne… It’s super hot and very big. It’s another big shift into city life craziness, coming from the small city of Hobart, Tasmania.

The Opera House was beautiful and really interesting to see because it is one of Sydney’s and Australia’s most recognizable icons. Plus the Sydney Bridge was nice to see from the ferry boat to Darling Harbor.

My favorite part of Sydney, however, has been Darling Harbor. Everything seemed to be other there… the aquarium, the wildlife center, McDonalds, etc. I also tried to find where the Real World Sydney house was, but I had no luck.

The only negative thing about Sydney was its transportation. I had to take public transportation everywhere I went because it is just too hot and too big to walk anywhere. Not to mention, the city is completely spread out over miles and miles of land and water, so you have to keep switching from bus to subway to ferry, then back to bus, and then back to subway, etc.

And at one point, because of the heat, my subway got stuck on the rails, so it took me four hours to get back to my hostel. For some reason, the heat was causing the railways to shift or something like that, so I had to just sit there on the subway and listen to my iPod for a couple of hours (not too bad though).

For the most part, Sydney was a great city, but I enjoyed Melbourne a lot better. I guess it was because there were actually things to do in Melbourne, like the Australian Open and the Great Ocean Road. In Sydney, there is not really much to do… there are only things to see. And after I saw the city, I got kind of tired and bored from walking around.