Sydney, Australia

Earlier this summer, I took a trip to Sydney with my family of 5. Being at the southern hemisphere, it was winter in June when we visited and the temperature hovered around 15DegC. It was a great break away from the blistering heat we were experiencing in Singapore!

Andrew was the designated navigator and Kenneth drove!

We arrived at the Sydney International Airport slightly before noon and rented a car from the many counters located prominently next to the baggage collection area. It costed us about SGD$500 or so, to rent this 7 seater for 4 days! Our parents were all set for golfing for most of the trip, so a 7 seater gave us enough space to ferry their 2 golf bags and 5 luggages to the hotel.

 Our huge car

Stopping for lunch before heading to check in at the hotel

My exams had ended just about a day before we left for Sydney, so it was really hard to plan ahead for this holiday. We were in Sydney clueless of what to do and where to go, so we pointed the GPS  towards town and drove! It only took us about half an hour to get to a this random food street near Bannerman Crescent. We satisfied Dad's craving for a chinese meal and headed off to drop them parents are the Australian Golf Club!

The Australian Golf Club is an affiliate to the Singapore Island Country Club, so my parents had an authorised pass to play at this prestigious club! Did some research and realised that The Australian Golf Club is in fact one of the oldest golf clubs in Australia. It was really an experience and thrill just being there and peering in.

We checked into Oaks GoldBrough Apartments, centrally located at Sydney's Darling Harbour. We managed to check into a 2 bedroom apartment which also came with a kitchen and laundry room. Perfect for a sizeable family accomodation and it's was conveniently located a street away from the train station, allowing us to choose to travel by train if we were visiting downtown Sydney. Parking in Sydney was comparatively much more expensive than we expected so we did take the train once.

 Darling Harbour view from our apartment

Pool at the ground floor!

We settled in and planned our itinerary over a few drinks at the nearby Hard Rock Cafe, Sydney which was located in Harbourside Centre just across our apartment. There was free wifi, making it a whole lot easier to google away what we wanted to do over the next 3 days.

 Being a fan of seafood, we located Fisherman's Wharf Sydney and decided to check it out for dinner! It was about a 15 minute walk from Habourside Centre and we decided to have our last chinese meal for the trip at the only restaurant open there- Fishermen's Wharf Seafood Restaurant, which was on the second level.

 Brothers' playing with the lobster, not knowing it would soon be plated!
I wasn't aware at this point that my Dad had already ordered for its' execution ):

 Lobster sashimi, that I am not a fan of. Perhaps, very much due to the fact that we had just been playing with it and seeing it crawl around

 Remaining lobster simply stir fried with no extra ingredients

Other dishes we tried included salmon sashimi, steamed prawns, stir fried crab and vegetables with mushrooms. Pretty rich in flavour for one meal, but having lobster, salmon and crab something off my Dad's to do list, so we took the chance to enjoy this sumptious meal with him.

The family <3

We were determined to try out the cheaper seafood available at the Fisherman's wharf, so we headed down to the same area for lunch the next day. It was bustling with people visiting for a cheap an yummy lunch but also with fishermen loading up for exporting to neighbouring markets for sale of these fresh seafood!

 Rows of choices!

 Mostly offered fresh, with an option to cook it on the spot for you

Family platter to feed 5 hungry souls

On top of the unhealthy mass of fried seafood we had fresh oysters! The Fisherman's wharf was definitely a great find for us to have consumed all that seafood.

 Swanky pubs just at the foot of the famous opera house

The day was spent checking out landmarks such as the Sydney opera house and to do some shopping. The day was rather gloomy, so the parents decided against another golf game as well. If I do earn enough to visit Sydney anytime in the future, I'd want to check out the row of food that was located just below the Sydney Opera House. It looked classy and seems like a great place to experience the great view!

We headed towards the Sydney tower for a 360Deg view of the Sydney night skyline while having buffet dinner at the '360 Bar and Dining' revolving restaurant at the peak!

 Glistening night lights

 Paranomic view of Sydney from the top !

Our trip up the Sydney Tower Eye had been one of the two tourist attractions that we had purchased from a Visitors' information Centre (they are speckled all around Sydney)! We paid a discounted price to have this packaged deal to visit the Sydney Tower and  Madame Tussauds' museum. There were other choices such as the Sydney Aquarium and the zoo, but we decided against those options because of plans to visit the Featherdale Wildlife Park in the outskirts!

We had planned for a day out of downtown Sydney and our first stop was an hours drive from our apartment at Darling Harbour to Featherdale Wildlife Park. We got a clue that this was a great place to visit en route visiting 'The Three Sisters' site from the many travel brochures we picked up from the airport/hotel.

Andrew holding the booklets which encourages pit-stops at the different attractions to get a stamp of the animals breeding there!

Featherdale Wildlife Park holds over 300 species of animals in the 7 acres of land that it sits on. What made this park so unique was that we got face to face encounters with many of the parks' habitants.

 Successfully telling the wallaby to look at the camera

 Fat bird

 Koalas were my favourite! This cutie hanging onto his leaves was just munching all the way through as we went on a photo frenzy with him

And I just had to post up a picture of this flat faced owl! I love his expression!

There are just too many pictures to post, but we had a great time exploring and learning more about many of Australia's wildlife! We continued our journey towards Echo Point, Blue mountains. We stopped at the base of Blue Mountains, arriving at Glenbrook Village, for a quick lunch at a cosy local joint!

 I don't recall seeing a restaurant signboard, but it is easily spotted with this red door and crowded interior.

This was my lunch of chicken avocado sandwiches served with rockets on the side, which I thought was simple but delicious. This cafe was reflecting of the cosmopolitan Australia and served up not a variety of cuisines, even including Indian that Andrew tried!

Being navigator for the day!

Our next stop was at Katoomba Falls lookout, a luck chance upon, while we were driving up towards Echo Point. We got our first glimpse of the Blue mountains in the back drop and a viewing of the Katoomba falls below us.

I did some research when I got back to find out why the Blue Mountains were termed 'Blue'. So, in fact, the surrounding atmosphere is filled with finely dispersed droplets of oil because of the high density of oil bearing Eucalyptus trees (Koala food!!), which, in combination with dust particles and water vapour, scatter short-wave length rays of light which are predominantly blue in colour. Fascinating (:

It would have been an hours hike down to the waterfalls which the rest of the family were not keen to embark on. Understandable because of our tight schedule to reach Echo point before sunset (Early sunset around 5pm)!  

We finally arrived to this magnificent view after slightly less than an hours drive from Katoomba Falls!

The Three Sisters is essentially an unusual rock formation representing three sisters who according to Aboriginal legend were turned to stone. If you visit in the evening, the 3 sisters rock formation would be lit up by the setting sun with a stunning view of the dark night sky behind. ( We managed to catch that glorious view while we were on the 'Scenic Cableway')

We drove towards Scenic world, a one stop station for 3 different types of rides around this area of the Blue Mountains! We opted for the 3 way ride which would take us to different points, to appreciate the surrounding beauty of Blue Mountains!

The scenic Skyway which glided over the Jamison Valley, offering the 360Deg view of the area with it's glass floor!  

The scenic Railway was next! It is the steepest incline railway in the world  which inolves a 310m descent through a cliff side tunnel down into an ancient rainforest ( World Heritage listed rainforest!). This attraction was inspired by the late 19th century English amusement rides at funfairs! Meaning, this is in fact, a really old (tame, by todays' standards) roller coaster.

Finally, we took the Scenic Cableway back to the headquarters. We learnt that the Scenic Cableway is the steepest aerial cable car in the Southern Hemisphere! And as we ascended out of the rainforest, we caught a last glimpse at the beautiful three sisters rock formation in the distance while admiring the surreal mountaineous view surrounding us!

 The next day, the brothers and I rose bright and early to head for the Sydney Harbour Bridge Express Climb while my parents headed for another round of golf! The express climb was hardly 'express' and it took us a total of over two hours for the entire trip up to the peak of the bridge!

The Sydney Harbour Bridge is the largest steel arch bridge and is iconic to Australia! At it's peak, we caught a stunning view of the neighbouring harbour and of course, the well known Sydney Opera House! It was definitely worth working our thigh muscles and braving the heights for that!

That's us at the top!

Andrew goofing around with 2 of the free caps given while purchasing the photo shown above!

Just a street down from the Bridge Climb's visitor centre at The Rocks, we chanced upon the Australian Hotel's pub & Restuarant. It offered It a unique selection of Australian cuisine, including emu, kangaroo and crocodile pizzas plus soup and pies in winter! ( No pictures because we were too hungry) We had a hearty meal which I really enjoyed before heading off to explore further!

 The Rocks Markets, 10am - 5pm Saturday and Sunday Foodies Market, 10am - 4pm Friday

Futher down, we stumbled upon the Rocks Market! We were thrilled to find an array of selection, from hand-made bags, one-off jewellery, original artworks and prints, with the gorgeous view of the Harbour in the distant banckground.

We carried on our travel down to the harbour and decided to try taking the river taxis back to Darling Harbour where the Madame Tussauds' Museum was located. It was worth the few dollars by taking this mode of transport over the conventional taxi simply because of the beautiful structures we got to see while enjoying the cool breeze! Amazing experience!

We met back with our parents at Darling Harbour, 4/5 stops after Sydney Harbour to head to Madame Tussauds'.I think the last time I visited the Madame Tussauds' Museum was in London when I was a pre-teen with my family. We were generally impressed with the many life-sized,authentic looking wax figurines!

 Our trip to the museum pretty much consisted of all of us goofing around and playing make belief!

 In Einstein's lab

 Audrey Hepburn (&Mom), Breakfast at Tiffany's

Iron Man!

We had to bring our folks back on the river taxi to experience as we did! We caught the beautiful sunset on this last night we had in Sydney!Afterwhich, we headed to a random pub to enjoy Australian Pub food and a few rounds of beer for the guys, to celebrate the rare chance of travelling as a family!

A huge steak each for us!

 Guess the music was too much to bear for mom!

The trip was enjoyable! But at my financial capacity as a student, I wouldn't dare dream of visiting the place anytime soon. It is, however, a great holiday destination for the fun-loving middle-aged because of the vibrant nature of Sydney!