Picture Postcard Perfect Sydney - too good to be true!

CBD
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So after fighting off the flies in Newcastle we headed for quite possibly one of the most photographed and recognised city's in the world - Sydney.  Buzzing with anticipation as we had heard many a wonderful thing about the place we fittingly arrived by crossing the Harbour Bridge in the dark of night with the most beautiful panaroma of the trip so far - there before us was the glorious vista of many a skyscrapers twinkling lights and to our left was the Opera House lit up to magical proportians - the perfect start!

Sydney Harbour Bridge
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The coach depositied us of outside the main train station at about 11pm and Em and I collected our bags, heaved them on to our backs and wondered into the tube (or should I say subway) to catch a train to Kings Cross.  Yep every city worth its salt has a seedy area populated by prositutes, glue sniffers and slightly off the rails screaming in the middle of the night, where are the men in white coats type characters and Em and I decided to set up camp in familiar surroundings so picked a hostel right in the centre of this bastion of city life.  Strangely enough however despite the reputation of Sydneys Kings Cross we trundled along the main street on that first evening with no fear or trepidation whatsoever, despite the slightly dirty aspect of the area it was not uncomfortable and should definately be on a backpackers list of places to visit while in the city,  yep if you want a little bit of paid how's your father or something illicit and naughty of the narcotics variety you could get it here but hey don't let that hold you back as there are restaurants and bars galore - enough to keep anyone chipper for an evening I reckon.

Max has arrived
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The Palms - our chosen hostel however is the opposite - do not and I repeat do not stay here, it is manky.  The place is an old 3 story townhouse down a side street just away from the main hub of Kings Cross and it was full to the rafters with people who had lived there for aproximately 3-4 months who had no desire to move out.  This coupled with the tiny communal living space, small and cluttered kitchen and never-ending queue of people for the "free" internet gave the hostel a particularly unwelcoming, unnerving and torrid atmosphere.  The only nice thing about the place was our ensuite bathroom which for reasons that I will explain later become the biggest and most needed accessory.

Pavorotti eat your heart out!
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On our first day in the City of Sights Em and I decided to do exactly that and go sightseeing so we got out our wee map and planned our route, and off we set from our hostel in Kings Cross walked down Oxford St to Liverpool St and sat in Hyde Park for lunch.  We later went to Greenwich via Lewisham and Croydon and ate tea at the Covent Garden hotel - ok I joke about the direction of our day but not to the extent that Sydney place names are based on good old London town - it is really quite funny and as Em and I are London girls at heart it made us feel quite homely and we quite enjoyed wondering around and finding another link to home - and I tell you if the Australians did a version of Monopoly for Sydney it would be an exact replica of the original London one!

Emma.. we know it was this big!
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Anyway I have digressed - off we went to the Opera House and the Botanic Gardens and they are picture postcard perfect.  The Opera House is stunning, a truly iconic building if ever there was one and the toilets there are sublime.  Tickets are far to expensive for words mind - $90 for the cheap seats at the back behind a pillar - as much as I wanted to watch something I just couldn't justify the expense, I used to sit in the stalls for free dontcha know...so we never made it further in then the loos in the foyer but that was far enough to know this place is amazing and that the acustics would be fab.  And the Botanic Gardens are lovely with loads of different areas and such a massive amount of space you could easily find a small corner in among the palms and ponds where you could lay out your blanket, have a picnic, drink some bubbles and chill out in pure relaxed bliss while gently fanning of those pesky Aussie flies.  Of course Em and I didn't do that we ate moist cheese sandwiches, washed down with flat coke and got evermore agressive towards the horrendous buzzing creatures which eternally attempted to rocket up our noses and into our ears but the thought was there and we appreciated the beauty and serenity of the place...Next stop was the Harbour Bridge which we meandered across late afternoon so that we could sit at Milsons Point to watch the sun set across the water and have the bridge, city scape and opera house in view for another one of those perfect Sydney moments, and all the elements were there apart from the sun being obscured by the cloud and the rain which started to drizzle down as soon as we stepped onto the Bridge - perfick.  Huddled on a bench in the cold and rain we got our pickys - and pretty nice they were too proving that from whatever angle and weather you encounter Sydney  you will always capture a bit of its beauty on polariod film.

Not far from home...
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So picture postcard sights ticked off the list we felt it was time to enter the nitty gritty of Sydney and experience the actual place, afterall the iconic sights are all well and good but what do the Sydneysiders do when they aren't mingling with the tourists?  So we set off to Newtown a rather hip, down with the "yoof" area about 10 mins away from the centre of the city, and wow what a treat.  If you like the slightly gritty round the edges type of suburb Newtown is the place for you with grafitti clad walls, retro shops galore (Ifell in love with some gorgeous typewriters and tea sets), cafes where you can get the perfect cup of coffee whilst reading fab mags sitting in a darkened corner or perching on bar stools and people watching out the window.  Newtown is quite frankly pretty 'cool'.  From here we wandered through Victoria Park up to Glebe which is sort of like a grown-up slightly more moneyed Newtown, it has the streetside cafes and nice little restaurants but in a more family friendly setting, and the houses here are luvely.  If you want the idylic affordable lifestyle of Saturday strolling and lazy Sundays yet still wish to be able to overlook the city - Glebe is your answer.

Night out on the town ladies!
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Having explored some other suburbs, visited both the Art Gallery of New South Wales (disjoined currating, the exhibits didn't really flow that well for me, was it thematic?  by era?  or ism? I couldn't really tell, but still a good collection of pieces and a great building) and the Modern Art Gallery, we felt that we deserved to treat ourselves to dinner.  When I say treat we couldn't afford to go all out so off we trundled to China Town to chow down on a $15 dinner special.  And boy, oh boy please none of you ever, ever do that, not only were the staff incredibly rude but Em's Satay Chicken was certainly not upto muster and as we were returning to the hostel she started to feel her belly tighten in a rather muscular contortionaist get this poisioned food out of my gut asap type way.  And yep she ended up spending the entire night with her head in the loo.  As I said the ensuite bathroom was a true godsend!!!  We later discovered that Sydneysiders DO NOT eat in China Town - no blooming wonder I say.

Saucy
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The next day we decided to take it easy in order for Em's belly to recover and  what better way to pamper yourself after a night over the bowl then to get your hair cut.  I shall explain: earlier in the week we had been stopped in the street by a young chap who promised that we could get a colour, gloss, cut and laser treatment (!) for only $50 from a well established saloon on Oxford Street.  Em and I normally steer well clear of these type of touts in ondon but for some reason we had 'glutton for punishment' and 'we are financial losers' written across our t'shirts whils walking past this dude.  Needless to say we umm'ed and arg'hed and after getting repeated assurances that it only cost $50 we ended up handing him our precious cash.  Of course the offer was to good to be true and when we booked with the saloon we discovered we had to stump up another $80!  Bloody typical, but as we felt we deserved a wee bit of pampering (our hair was looking pretty grim) we decided bugger it and off we trotted.  Not only did we get our hair pruned, washed professionally with gloss treatments and a wee bit of colour enhancer aye Em? we also got our under arms lasered. A hilarious experience especially as the hair on my underarms is so pale the nurse whacked the laser up the strongest she had ever got it going and rated me a level 2 - a level 1 is an albino!  I can still smell that burning hair - lovely.  But I must say we came out looking fabulous darrling and our armpits were hair free.

Pouting minus Jellyfish...
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Looking gorgeous and feeling sublime - Em had made a marvelous recovery by this point - amazing what a wee bit of princess pampering can do to our gal, we accordingly dolled ourselves up and pretty much drank Sydney dry.  The perfick end to the perfect city or at least the night started out picture perfect and ended up completly messy.  But what can you say aye?