by Layla
We had been looking forward to this for a while: our first proper holiday from our new Tokyo home, in pursuit of English language relaxation and lots of cultural fun without jetlag – so where better than a trip to Sydney, Australia! It may have been unpleasantly an overnight 9 hour flight… but the time difference was minimal. Which meant that we slept, landed, acquired mobile phone service (ten thousand times easier to do than in our new home country), checked into our beautiful AirBnB apartment in Paddington, and just over an hour after landing, we were feeling good and eating glorious avocado toast in Bill’s, a breakfast place just minutes from our apartment (and yes, the same Bill’s that has a branch in Tokyo that we also like…). Hooray!
Fuelled by avocado, we explored our new neighbourhood. Paddington is absolutely delightful: hipster, charming, pretty, and full of cool shops, bars and restaurants, including several amazingly nice bookshops. We immediately adopted the neighbourhood as our beloved home. Having duly admired it, and strolled in a sunken Roman garden in the sunshine, as you do, we realised it was still only 9:45am… so we walked into town and joined a really good free walking tour of downtown Sydney. We really enjoyed hearing stories of how the city grew from the efforts of convicts from the UK, admired the iconic Opera House and Harbour Bridge, and hospital built on the proceeds of selling rum… and then had a tasty lunch in a charming though touristy area called The Rocks. Followed by a quick pop into a gallery to enjoy a show that was part of a citywide photography festival. Hooray.
After that we walked round the harbour to the Opera House and spent a while reading (ahem, napping in my case) on the grass at the Botanical Gardens which are big and beautiful, overlooking the water, and such a delight. We walked all the way home afterwards, via a supermarket to stock up our new apartment. After that we duly had dinner at home, then supplemented that with wine and cheese at a lovely local Italian place. What a brilliant first day!
On Sunday we decided to take advantage of Sydney’s lovely $2.10 all-day Sunday travel ticket and took the ferry to Manly. When I last visited about 16 years ago, Manly was a rather downtrodden beach resort. Now it’s gone all hipster. Roz acquired a flat white and a toasted banana bread from a pretentious food cart, we picked up a picnic of super-organic veggie sandwiches from a fancy lunch place, and before long we were off on our main Manly mission: a 10km walk/hike along coastal paths to The Spit (a bridge from which we could get a bus back into town). The walk was glorious. As the sun shone, we stripped off layers, and delighted in the walking path, which mostly clung to the pretty water. We stopped for our picnic, then the trail started to get more exciting, requiring a bit of rock scrambling, then a long way through a nature reserve, which felt fun and remote as though we were in a jungle sort of place. Then we started to get a bit tired and our water ran out (necessitating an undercover thieving operation where we had to desperately acquire some from a garden tap in someone’s driveway – the less said of this indignity, the better!), but a lovely café eventually appeared on the horizon, filling us with tea and lemonade and raspberry muffins, which powered us along the last 30 minutes to the bus… What a super walk! Take more than a small bottle of water if you’re doing it though…
We had a quick dinner at home, then glammed up for one of the evenings I was looking forward to most: Heathers the Musical… at the Sydney Opera House! Two brilliant things at once. It was very cool walking into the Opera House, and the rock musical was rather fabulous and very reminiscent of my teenage years watching Heathers on video. Such fun! We drank fizz in the Opera House bar and toasted our excellent start to the holiday.
The next day was rainy and chilly, and everybody in Sydney was aghast. We hid in a completely glorious bookshop Berkeluow, just a 2 minute walk from our apartment. Possibly the loveliest bookshop either of us have ever visited. We spent ages browsing the shelves – and having tea and cake in their café. Then we headed into the centre of town to try to get Roz’s phone fixed as it was playing up. We integrated a visit to the mobile provider shop and the Apple store with a delicious quiche and vegetables lunch in the very beautiful old Queen Victoria Building. After Japan living, we are particularly charmed by the vast availability of vegetarian quiche type items and loads of tasty, healthy, definitely-vegetarian salads available everywhere here…
Having polished off lunch, we proceeded to the Museum of Contemporary Art, on Sydney Harbour. A very cool building, but we were not especially inspired by most of its contents… but nevertheless, we had a pleasant half hour wandering around looking at the exhibits and climbing over school groups before a return to the Apple store and a coffee in a nice little coffeeshop nearby. The continuing rain inspired us to head for home and watch a sneaky first episode of the new series of Orange is the New Black while devouring copious chocolate for the rest of the afternoon…
That evening, after another dinner at home, we walked to another very cool theatre to see a much-anticipated play, The Literati. Based on Moliere’s Les Femmes Savantes, the play was entirely in rhyming couplets in an amazingly non-annoying way. It was witty and compelling and cool and we were both completely delighted. We have really, really been missing good theatre! Afterwards we walked through the rather seedy Kings Cross to the posher Potts Point, where we settled in Monopole restaurant for their famous cheese board… and a little wine to wash it down. A lovely end to the evening. Even if the walk home was a tad chilly…
The next morning the sun was shining. Roz headed to a yoga class (which made her pine desperately for regular yoga classes in English) while I went for a meeting with one of the Sydney-based people who works for an organisation I run. He took me on a cool walk all over the area, pointing out historical and architectural features as we strolled through Rushcutters Park, admired boats, and noted the spot where refrigeration was invented (funded by his great grandfather, apparently). All very cool and interesting. Afterwards we met up with Roz, who was virtuously doing some Japanese homework in lovely Berkelouws bookshop café. After my colleague left, we ordered all sorts of delicious lunch items.
After lunch we walked up Oxford Street, Paddington’s main drag, going into cool shops and musing on buying furniture for our imminent new Tokyo house… then we got to the huge Centennial Park and spent the rest of the afternoon strolling through the grass and around its many pretty lakes in the sunshine. We polished off the afternoon at a chocolate café where I aspired to acquire a drink, ice chocolate, that I had when I came to Sydney in my youth. Alas it no longer seems to be a thing, so I had to make do with a chocolate milkshake instead. Such hardship… That evening we had outstanding Italian tapas at 10 William Street, then went to a cute arty cinema to see Mustang, a Turkish film which was excellent but depressing. But we enjoyed the treat of seeing a foreign film with subtitles in English! Another lovely day.
Yesterday the sun was still shining, but we still had our hearts set on going to the Orpheum, a brilliant art deco cinema, for their lunch-and-a-film afternoon. It was us and a cinema full of pensioners, but we delighted in the amazing space and the Wurlitzer organ (which rose out of the floor, played by the resident organist) before seeing Florence Foster Jenkins, which was a very sweet movie (and disconcertingly featured Howard from the Big Bang Theory). Afterwards, having eschewed the old lady non-veggie sandwiches on offer at the cinema, we had avocado toast at a hipster coffee place at Neutral Junction, before getting the bus back into town. We walked to Banagaroo Nature Reserve, a fairly deserted lawn overlooking the water to the west of Sydney Harbour Bridge where we read our books for ages, before mustering our energy and walking up and over the Sydney Harbour Bridge along a cool pedestrian footpath. Fab views, cool bridge, and lots of fun.
After that exertion it was obviously time for another chocolate café where I pursued my ice chocolate dream again in vain (but had another giant chocolate milkshake. Not exactly a slimming vacation…). Then we walked along the water to a nice Italian restaurant opposite the Sydney Theatre Company’s Roslyn Packer Theatre, near the water and very cool, to see Arthur Miller’s All My Son’s. While not entirely my cup of tea, it was a good production and we both enjoyed the whole experience. Again, home by bus. I love that the size of Sydney and its great bus system makes it easy to get around.
This morning I sent Roz to the supermarket while I sit in lovely Berkeluow’s bookshop with a smoothie, writing this blog. Ah, it’s a hard life…
