Sydney - Crap Hostels - And a Dirty Abbo Man

So after an awesome time in New Zealand we touch down in Sydney – and to get me in the mood I watched Reef on the plain (it’s a film about people being eaten by sharks in Oz) bad idea! Anyway we land and get in a shuttle bus to the hostel that we had booked. We are spending our first few days in Sydney in the YHA on Glebe Point Road in Glebe.


Glebe is an awesome area not exactly central but only a 30 min walk to the centre and with constant buses. The area has a cool artsy hippy vibe – with vegetarian restaurants and cool cafes – bookstores and boutiques line this street. The locals would not look out of place at a festival.


We arrive at the hostel and learn the most important lesson about backpacking the fun way – don’t book into a large chain hostel especially a YHA they are lame. We arrive and are greeted by a geeky girl with a nervous laugh then shown to our room. The room was fine not incredible but nice enough. We are told that there would be a party on the roof top for the Royal Wedding so we thought meh why not! I will come back to this later.

After buying our tickets we head out to explore Sydney – first impressions it is COOL very multicultural with a great China Town way more laid back than London, it’s relatively quiet for a city – but I like that. We head to George Street that is the main road and head of course – to the Opera House. On the way a strange Abbo man sticks his hand up my skirt and I have a small cry (this was a onetime thing they don’t all do that) anyway we walk to the Opera House – we first see the Harbour Bridge and it is very impressive; it is huge.


We walk a little further and then we see it I can’t quite explain the first time that you see the Opera House but more than being in New Zealand it makes you feel like you are really far from home (that you have actually made it to the other side of the world) it’s an incredible feeling that comes from the feeling of accomplishment but not from the sight of the building itself.
What I’m about to say is may be controversial but it’s what I think – so - it is a lot smaller than you think – it is cream not bright white and although it may be architecturally significant I would say it was - umm ok. It is however completely tiled I don’t know why but I thought that was cool. Although the building was not quite what I thought that it was going to be it is still a must see because of what it represents.

We then went for a wander in the lovely Botanical Gardens – I love it there it is really nice. There are parrots and bats everywhere and it is a great place to sit and relax in the sun.


Anyway back to this party at the hostel – wow it was bad this big chain hostel had absolutely no personality everyone was weird either old and infirm or was the sort of person who stays in playing on their X Box every Saturday night. We were watching the Royal Wedding and were limited to two beers each for our “drinking game” there was a no wine policy and the whole thing was just shocking I have never seen such bad party planning in my entire life - Needless to say that we checked out pretty quickly and headed somewhere new.

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