Bondi Beach, Central Sydney and Airports

I managed to blag a lift to the airport in the morning. Since I was on a domestic flight to Brisbane later that day, I checked in my baggage and then caught a train to central Sydney, which only happened to be ten minutes away.

My first stop was Bondi Beach. Unusually there is no train there - you have to take a bus for the last twenty minutes or so. The beach itself wasn't all that - not a patch on Manly yesterday anyway. All the surfer chicks were interesting, I was kinda puzzled as to why this was Australia's most famous sand. Check it out for yourself here.

Still, I hung around for an early afternoon lunch consisting of a fresh, if a bit oily, fish and chips. I finally dipped into the Pacific too. It was colder than I thought it'd be. I rounded off my time there checking out some Aboriginal carvings in the vicinity.

Just a not on the climate: maybe it was a typical Sydney winter but I noticed how... temperamental... the weather was. I was flipping my jacket on and off as the temperature dipped low and peaked high. It got pretty annoying after a while.

I then made my way back to central Sydney. I alighted at backpacker central, King's Cross, where I checked out (for research and from a distance) the red light district of Darlinghurst Road. This led on to the shopping district of Oxford Street. I walked down a bit till I hit Darlinghurst and Little Italy - this was supposed to be full of funky cafes and places to chill out but I didn't seem to find anything there myself. I was pretty disappointed actually, since I had planned on killing some time there. Various pictures from my time there here.

The rest of the early evening was spent revisiting Hyde Park and Darling Harbour, this time by day. The latter was as dead as it was the night before (barring the concert); perhaps I was there too early. My last stop before heading back to the airport was the Paddy Markets. This was just a shopping centre, although I suspect it was more of a historical trading centre in its previous life. I picked up some souvenirs and then decided to finally call time on Sydney.

I caught the train to the airport from Central Station. From there I caught my flight to Brisbane where the second chapter of this holiday was due to begin. Sydney had set a pretty good pace for the holiday so far, and I was pretty interested in how this next part would fare.