Our guide to Sydney, Australia!

I have written below our guide to successfully adventuring Sydney, Australia in five nights. Erika and I spent a total of five nights in Sydney, which ended up being the perfect amount of time for us. We spent the first three nights in downtown Sydney at Megaboom Hotel, and the last two nights we spent in Noah’s Backpackers Bondi Hostel. We had some days where the weather was very sunny and beautiful, and the others where it was rainy and gloomy (which limited us to some things, but still made the best out of!) .

Our five day guide in Sydney consisted of:

Day One: A day spent in Surry Hills
(blog post has been recently uploaded about Surry Hills)

Day Two: Day Spent in Blue Mountains
(blog post has been recently uploaded about our day in the Blue Mountains)

Day Three: Sight SeeingWe spent day three visiting iconic landmarks such as the Sydney Opera House, and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. If you Uber to the Sydney Opera house, you are able to get both of these views, plus a walk away from the Botanic Gardens. Considering the rainy weather we had this day, we passed on the Botanic Gardens, but made the best out of everything else!

After we were done exploring, all we wanted to do was warm up with a cup of tea or grab some food. A couple of things we learned this day is that in Sydney A LOT of restaurants and cafes are closed on Sundays. This was a big problem for us because since we didn’t have our Roam-like-Home plan on, we needed to find wifi to connect to for our ride back to the hotel. The other thing we have learned is that in Sydney,  Ubers are really expensive. After figuring out our wifi situations, we stopped at our hotel, freshened up, and made our way over to Darling Harbour for an Italian dinner.

Day Four: Climbing up the Sydney Harbour Bridge, shopping at the Westfield mall, and, making our way to our two nights in Bondi.

10:35am is when our bridge climb at the Sydney Harbour Bridge began. It takes around an hour to suit up and learn the safety procedures for this climb. One thing I found interesting and unexpected was that they do a breathalyzer test to see your blood alcohol level. Because of this, I would extremely recommend making sure you don’t have a crazy night before doing the climb (so you are able to complete it, and not having to get escorted out from alcohol). After the hour of suiting up and training, we were out on the bridge for two hours. While we were out there we learned that this bridge is the biggest single arch bridge in the world, and this is defiantly the place to be to get the views of Sydney. On this tour we were unable to take our cameras or go pros, which made this a fantastic opportunity to ditch our technology, and take in absolutely everything. After the time we spent on the bridge, we purchased some pictures from the climb, and made our way to “The Australian” which was a good, walking distance restaurant. The Westfield mall was our next stop after that, and this is where I discovered and fell in love with a super cute Swedish stationary store called Kikki.K . If you don’t know me, I love being super organized, and am always on a mission of trying to find the perfect day planner. This is where I found the cutest one ever, that was leather, bright pink (my favourite colour), and where I could engrave my initials on it in gold.The Westfield mall is also where I fell in love and purchased my first pair of Australian Quay sunglasses. After finishing off a successful shopping trip, we picked up our luggage from our hotel and Uber’d our way to Bondi (which is actually pronounced Bond-eye and not Bond-ee, for those who were unsure). Our first night in Bondi was a Monday night which meant we were absolutely clueless on where to go for a good “night life” experience. At our hostel we were lucky enough to have a list of the places “to be”during the day and at night for every day of the week. Monday’s suggested night out was located at the Bavarian Bar for drinks and karaoke.

When we headed over to the Bavarian it was around 9pm and we didn’t know what to expect. We found out the last call at the bar was at 10:30pm, so we didn’t waste time ordering drinks. An average cocktail was priced around $18, so we learned that the smart way to drink is cutting the price in half by ordering mixed drinks (such as one of my classics, vodka crans.) Around 12pm is when they kicked everyone out, which is considered very early for what we’re used to. At that time we stumbled on the way home back to our hostel, with our voices lost from loudly and poorly “singing” karaoke.

Day Five: Spending the day at Bondi Beach and the Bondi Icebergs .Today we spent the majority of our day at Australia’s number one beach, Bondi Beach, and also at the famous Bondi Icebergs pool. At the pool they charge you $7 for an all day pass, and you can rent a towel for $3.50. The views of walking to these two destinations were picture perfect, and definitely must sees. We decided that when the sun went down, we’d go back to our hostel, refresh, and make our way for dinner and some drinks. With no dinner destination in mind, we discovered Hotel Bondi where we had a really enjoyable dinner. The restaurant was clean, the staff was friendly, good variety of food options, and it had a decent amount of dinner and drink specials. Hotel Bondi also had a very cute outdoor patio that we enjoyed our dinner on, before making our way to our next stop “The Bucketlist” for some drinks. The Bucketlist is a restaurant I have heard a lot of hype about before our trip. After being there, the scene is really cool, with a lot of vibrant lights and extreme beach vibes. I checked out their menu before hand, which I wasn’t too fond of, so that’s why we only stopped in for some drinks. This place I would definitely recommend checking out during the day, as I think it’d be a perfect place to chill out and enjoy some drinks during a hot, sunny beach day.

This was our last night in Bondi, and where we learned that we made a rookie mistake while booking our first domestic Australian flight. The next morning we needed to be at the airport two hours early for our 7am flight to Cairns. This called for heading back to the hostel after the Bucketlist and getting to bed around 1am. Even though we tried having an early night for our early morning, we arrived to the airport only 45 minutes before our flight took off. We were literally “those people” who made it just before our flight check in closed….. Oops…

Overall, we couldn’t have asked for a better first experience in Sydney. We accomplished everything we wanted to, and were very pleased with the length of our stay. We both think any more time in Sydney would have been too long, and any less wouldn’t have been enough.

Thanks for staying connected with our travels, and keep an eye for my next blog adventures of how we spent our 4 days in Cairns, Australia.