Oh Sydney

Time does fly really fast might sound cliché, but it’s true somehow.

It has been three years since my trip to Sydney. When I first came back from Sydney, I promised myself (agaiiinnnn, Yuna?) to post the entire story of my trip, even to the point that would make people get sick of it. But, as you can see on my wall, I just posted one story about Sydney, and I have never written anything since then. I think I’m the one who gets sick of writing it, even before making the readers sick of reading it. That’s my classic post-traveling writing cycle.

Since I’m talking about it, let’s see how far I could tell my memories. I posted about my first day a very very long time ago here. My friends and I spent half of our second day in Katoomba, which was one of my most memorable trips. Our third day was spent in Canberra. So, now, let’s see the rest few days. It won’t be too long since we just spent 4 days together and then I added 2 days more travel around Sydney alone.

Our first choice on the fourth day was the area near Town Hall Station. We were interested in few historic buildings, located not far from the station, which were also renowned for its beautiful architecture, like Queen Victoria Building, St Andrew’s Cathedral, and the Town Hall. Besides that, Liz had planned to buy at least one cloth at any store in QVB, and later canceled it because we found that the prices were quite expensive, it exceeded our budget, even though we already prepared for it. In the end, all we could do inside the QVB was taking picture. Another story came from the under reconstruction Town Hall that made us passing it fast too. It was as fast as how we passed St Andrew Cathedral because that was Sunday, and Sunday Morning church service was held. We didn’t feel like attending it that time (may be next time). 😀

Since that day was our last day together, before Liz and Anna were going back to Indonesia, we often moved from one place to another with the maximum speed. Our next destination was Darling Harbour that we reached by walking. There were so many things to see in Darling Harbour, however we didn’t do all of it. Besides the fact that we already visited the place on the night before, which I liked it more, my friends and I weren’t so into all of the attractions.

That morning, we prefer slouching and having conversation on the Harbourside to spending our money on Madam Tussauds that I wasn’t so interested in, or Maritime Museum that Anna didn’t feel like visiting, or IMAX that wasn’t included in Liz’s list. We chose it while sipping our paper-cup-of-street-vendor coffees with the view of soothing Cockle Bay, opposites to Pyrmont Bridge. Most of our conversation was about the last few days that we had passed together and full of surprising things.

Finished the things with Darling Harbour, we continued walking to Paddy’s Market via Chinese Garden. Skipped everything in between, we were enthusiastic more in buying oleh-oleh (souvenirs, gifts) for our loved one in Indonesia, our friends, and coworkers in spite of the problems that would arise later, whether we bought those oleh-oleh or didn’t bring any. However, we’re Indonesian to the marrow, we bought it in the end and it took one additional baggage for me (that was the last big party of oleh-oleh).

Dealt with the most important thing on that day, the next destination was Liz’s most favorite thing, beach, and of course it had to be Bondi Beach. As I usually did when beach was mentioned in the list, I didn’t put much effort on searching about it. I would do what the person in charged wanted to do. The only thing that I was interested about Bondi Beach was the fish and chips that my friend, Ibam had promised me. Since he had lived for 10 years in Sydney, I trusted him saying that Bondi had one of the best fish and chips in town. He owed me that. And he fulfilled it. The fish and chips were tasty.

Bondi Beach was so clean and the feeling of having swimming and playing in the Pacific Ocean seemed so tempting, but the thought of swimming in Pacific Ocean when the temperature was much lesser than the temperature of our cold air conditioner back in Indonesia was not our thing, so Liz declined having it. After another slouching and chatting time, we decided to walk leisurely to the northern area of Bondi Beach and reached Ben Buckler Park to have another angle of enjoying the limitless view of Pacific Ocean. The walk was amusing and refreshing though.

Bondi beach was not our closing. We had few things in between, two of which were Max Brenner Chocolate and one more chatting time in King Cross Hotel Bar. Max Brenner was satisfying, but we had special story about King Cross Bar.

Liz, Anna, and I were not so into any alcoholic beverage, but sometimes we became those tourists which were influenced by what the other said as “must-try-things”. Despite all of our circumstances, we shared this one drink which was suggested by the bartender. I didn’t have any idea how Liz did handle her alcoholic beverage allergy, but she was chatting there with us all night, as though nothing had happened (after it, I saw the allergy’s direct effect to her body and it was pretty bad). I couldn’t spill the beans of the glasses reaction to Anna, but she managed to follow the conversation until the end (I wondered how). As for me, it was my second alcoholic drink. All I had before was only tuak (distilled sugar palm drink from Toraja), no others.

Forget about the drink thing, the most important thing was we enjoyed every single minute that we spent at King Cross Hotel Bar; it was one of our best moments. No regrets (I confirmed it).  And that how our vacation together was ended.

Oh, Sydney, how can I forget you?

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