Sydney (New Year), New South Wales, Australia

30th December 2017 – 2nd January 2018

30^th December

After our super early start in Melbourne, we arrived at Avalon airport much earlier than we needed to, but that was probably because everything had gone so smoothly at this point: there was no traffic, we parked up easily and there was no queue at security, so we were straight through.

We sat and waited in the airport until about 5.30, when they started boarding for our 6am flight. As we were both very tired, we tried to sleep on the flight, but I couldn’t really get myself comfortable enough to drift off.

Luckily, we landed just after 7, which was almost half an hour ahead of schedule. We didn’t have to collect any bags, or go through security, so as soon as we were off the plane, we could go straight out. Jake collected us from the airport, and took us back to his (where we were staying for the few nights we were there), which made it all much easier on us.

When we got back to Jake’s, Sam was there too, and we met her boyfriend, Jon. We tried to kid ourselves that we weren’t tired and were ready to go out and explore, but as soon as Jake showed us our room, we both collapsed on the bed and had a nap.

Despite it raining when we landed, it was still so muggy, so was quite uncomfortable. Luckily, the rain stopped mid-morning, so at least it was just hot.

Once we had woken from our naps, Jake, Sam and Jon had decided that they were going out for breakfast. As we hadn’t really eaten yet, and we were slightly refreshed from our nap, we went with them.

We walked to a cute little café and restaurant area, called the Tramsheds, which looked like an old tram stop – it was all done up really nicely. We walked through the Tramsheds and into a café on the other side (a different one to what was planned, as the first was so busy). For breakfast, I had ‘mini burgers’ which were bacon and egg on mini bread rolls and very tasty.

After we had eaten, we walked back to the apartment to chill out for a little bit. As soon as we started to relax, I started to drift off again, so went for another nap. I had made plans to meet up with Hannah later in the afternoon, so I needed to rest up to get myself up again, but it was a struggle when it came to it.

Once I had fully woken from my third nap of the day, I got ready for the city before we left for the bus stop. The bus stop was in a perfect location and it took us straight into the centre of Sydney.

When we got off the bus, we had a walk down the road towards the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. We had planned to meet Hannah in the Opera Bar, but we were there a little early. We found ourselves a couple of seats on the end of another table and got ourselves some drinks. The weather had changed so much throughout the day, and the heat at this point was becoming unbearable – we were sweating sat still. It was over 35 degrees again and we wanted to find some shade to sit in, but it was a struggle.

Hannah and her friend arrived to meet us after a little while. It was nice to have a catch up and a chat. We caught up about our travels so far and talked about our plans for our future travels. Neither of us could stay for very long because it was so hot, and we were all baking in the sun, and me and Joe had a BBQ to get back to, at Jake’s.

After saying goodbye to Hannah, we walked back to the bus stop, and we got the bus back to Jake’s. Back at Jake’s, his friends had already arrived for the BBQ, so we met them and sat down for a chat. We spent the night chatting and eating the food from the Barbie, sitting on the balcony, watching the huge bats fly over our heads.

As the night went on, I struggled to stay awake for much longer (despite the numerous naps), so made the decision to go to bed. Not long after we had gone to bed, we heard the others leave, so I didn’t feel too bad bout going to bed while they were still there.

 

31^st December

After a long and great sleep, we got up around 9am. We got up and ready, and packed ourselves a bag, ready for the long day we had ahead of us – we had decided to go into the city early and wait for the fireworks in a good spot.

After we were ready, we left the house just before 10. We had a plan in mind to get the bus into the city, and then the train over to the other side of the bridge, and then get some breakfast before finding a spot to sit. We thought this was a perfect plan, as we had left reasonably early.

The bus and the train part of the plan went very smoothly. However, when we were crossing over the Sydney Harbour Bridge, to get to the north side of Sydney, we could see one of the viewpoints, where we were going to try and sit, and it was already packed! As we had two places in mind, we decided to still go ahead with our plan to get breakfast and decide where to go once we had eaten.

Once we had finished our breakfast, we thought it would be better to go to the other spot that Michelle had suggested to us (Lavender Bay). I thought I caught a glimpse of it when I was on the train and it looked pretty quiet, and it was just down the street from the café where we were, so we walked there first.

When we got to Lavender Bay, it was perfect. There weren’t many people there at the time when we arrived, which was ideal. We got ourselves a spot right at the front and had a great view of the Luna Park, the bridge and then Opera House in the distance. It was ideal, all we had to do at this point was wait for twelve and a half hours.

The weather was perfect weather for waiting around all day. It wasn’t too hot and there was a good amount of cloud cover, so we didn’t get burnt. We spent the majority of the day lounging around in our little spot that we had. We chilled out, and chatted, and took it in turns to go for mini walks to stretch our legs. One of my breaks included a hunt for ice cream, obviously!

Time seemed to pass quite quickly, to say that we weren’t really doing anything. As the day went by, it got busier and busier in the park, and going to the toilet was a tell-tale sign for this, as it took us half an hour at least, to get through the queue. As we had to take it in turns to guard the spot, this could get quite boring when you’re left for over half an hour, but we managed.

As the sun went down, Luna Park, the bridge and the Opera House, started to light up. We really did have a perfect view – we could see it all.

At 9pm, we had our first set of fireworks go off over the bridge. They were very pretty and got me very excited for the real thing at midnight, and at this point, it meant that we only had three more hours to wait.

We waited and waited and as time went on, we got more and more tired, but obviously we weren’t giving up now. The queues outside the park were huge at this point, but people weren’t allowed in because the police shut the gates once the park is full. I went out for a toilet break, and as I had finished, after queuing for forty minutes, the police reopened the gates (as a lot of families had left after the 9pm fireworks), and I got trapped in the crowds! I was just lucky that I already had my spot reserved for me.

Just before midnight, we decided to stand up – not that we needed to, as we already had a perfect view. I wanted to video that last few seconds of the countdown and then the beginning of the fireworks, but I was that fixated on watching the timer on the pylons of the bridge, countdown from 90, I missed the end of the countdown – it was a very poor effort!

The fireworks were amazing. At first, not much was happening on the bridge and I thought that I was going to be disappointed. However, once they started to go off over the bridge, they were fantastic. I loved the show so much, I really didn’t want it to stop!

Once the fireworks were over, it was about 12.15 and people started to leave. We didn’t particularly need to rush out, as we knew there were going to be queues everywhere, so we packed up our things and left at our own pace.

Every single street around us, was packed full of people, but the police were doing a good job of monitoring the situation and were only letting people through in groups to try and make it easier. We made it up to the train station, where there were more queues and hundreds of moaning people – I really don’t know what they expected on New Years Eve, in Sydney.

After waiting patiently, we made it through the crowds and onto the train. The train was busy but I’ve been on busier trams before, so it wasn’t bad at all. We got off the train at an earlier stop, to try and catch the bus at an earlier stop, so that we could maybe get a seat, in case there were crowds.

We finally made it home at 2am, and climbed straight into bed.

 

1^st January

On New Years Day, we stayed in bed until about 10. It was another hot day in Sydney and we’d obviously had a late night, so it was quite difficult to find the motivation to get up, but we didn’t want to waste our day.

Once we were up and ready, we head out into the city again. We had decided to go to Bondi Beach for the day, but we had to get a bus into the city, so that we could get a bus back out again. Being from England, where very little people get out of bed on New Years Day, we kind of expected the same in Sydney, but we were wrong.

At first, we didn’t realise quite how busy it was, because we were quite lucky to get on the first bus that came, but driving along to Bondi, each stop was packed with people, and the driver wasn’t stopping to collect anyone, as the bus was already so full.

When we arrived at the beach, that was just as busy as the bus stops – it was full! We found ourselves a spot near the back, where we set up our towels and chilled out for a little bit. We had ordered pizza from a nearby takeaway (where I went last time I was there) so when that was ready, I went to collect it. We ate our pizza on the beach, and did some sunbathing, before we decided to go for a swim.

As we both wanted to go in the water, we thought it would be a good idea to move all of our stuff to the front of the beach, where we could see it. We went into the water and the waves were huge, it was so much fun to fight them. As Joe was having such a good time, he kept dragging me further and further in, until I was fully taken out by a wave and my sunglasses were taken off my head and lost. We had a quick look for them, but I knew they were gone forever, which was slightly annoying because I rely on them so much.

Once we had had enough of being bashed about by the waves, we got out and dried off. It had cooled off slightly, but it was still good enough to lie out in, and sunbathe, and it was perfect conditions for Joe to have a nap.

After we had fully dried off, we got dressed and went for a wander to the shops and cafés. We both wanted a drink and I wanted to look for some new sunnies. Luckily, I found a pair I liked, in the first shop we went to. We walked along the front and got ourselves a drink, before buying our first ice cream of the year.

While we were eating our ice cream, we thought it would be a good idea to get ourselves in a bus queue, as they were all huge. I had a quick look at the bus stops on my phone and we decided to walk back down the street to catch the bus at an earlier stop – in the hope that it would be quieter, as we had no chance of getting on a bus where we were. The plan worked, and we were on the first bus that came to us, and we had a seat. We got the bus back into the city, and then another bus back out to Jake’s, in Glebe.

When we got back to Jake’s, we showered off the sand and sweat and got ready to go out for tea. For tea, we walked to the Tramsheds again, as we really liked the look of it, and we wanted to try a different place. The place that Jake and Sam recommended to us, was shut, and not much was open (with it being New Years Day), but we found somewhere and had a lovely meal with our first New Years drink.

After tea, we went back to Jake’s and relaxed for the rest of the evening, we watched TV together, and said our goodbyes (as Jake and Sam had work the next day, so we wouldn’t see them), before going off to bed.

 

2^nd January

We treated ourselves to the best lie in, of the trip, the next morning, as we had no real plans, until our flight in the evening. We were in no rush to get up and had a really lazy morning, chilling out in the apartment.

At around 1pm, we nipped out to get a thank you present for Jake and Sam for looking after us and giving us somewhere to stay – our New Years trip really wouldn’t have been possible without them!

Once we were back and had packed up our things and tidied up after ourselves, we got the bus into the city. As we weren’t flying until 10pm, we had the time to chill out in the city, so we wandered around and had a look in some shops.

After wandering around some shops, we made our way to the Harbour front to get a very late lunch/ early dinner. We sat in a restaurant over looking the bridge, but struggled to find a seat in the shade – and we needed one at this point. The soon changed though (which seems to be a regular thing over here), and by the time we had finished eating, the clouds had come over and it was about to rain.

There was a little rain, while we walked around to the Opera House, but not enough to stop us doing things. From the Opera House, we walked back up into the centre, to try and waste some time. On the way, we stopped to watch a street artist, who was juggling on a high up bicycle.

In the centre, we found a Max Brenner café (a chocolate café) and stopped for a treat. We both ordered something off the menu, not fully knowing what it would be and when they both arrived, mine was about ten times the size of Joe’s – I couldn’t even finish it, which is surprising for me!

To kill some more time, we thought we would have another wander around the shops, but they were all shutting, so we didn’t really have much to do.

Instead of waiting in the city, we thought we would just get the train to the airport and wait there instead – at least then, we didn’t have to faff about.

At the airport, we went through security, and found our gate, where we sat and waited for our flight. We played some cards to pass the time, and before we knew it, we were ready to board at 9.45.

Spending New Years in Sydney was definitely an experience I won’t forget. Although the wait was a long one, it was so worth it, as we had the best views, for free. Even though we should have expected it, it was definitely a lot busier than I thought it would be, on New Years Day, but we still had a great time and I can’t wait for more adventures throughout the rest of the year!

To travel is to live, Katie x