I've been in Sydney and Wollongong the past week for a conference followed by a short break. I headed to Wollongong first, which is south of Sydney for a social marketing conference. The conference was good, although it was focussed more on public health rather than marketing which I found quite interesting. I stayed in a nice hotel, with a clean shower and a big enough bathroom counter for me to put all my things (toilettries must make up the bulk of my luggage weight!). I had a big queen-sized bed all to myself, with crisp white sheets and the room was nice and warm - a big welcome since it was quite cold outside.
I arrived in Sydney on Sunday and took a train down to Wollongong. The train ride took about 2 hours but part of the route had a seaside view and you could see all the way out to the horizon. My original flight was cancelled and rescheduled for a later departure so there wasn't much time to walk around in Wollongong before the shops closed. I don't think I could ever live there as the town is so small and coming from a very cosmopolitan city, I just can't do small and quiet towns. Wollongong looked like what I imagine Brisbane to have been like 10 years ago. However, the closer to the harbour you got, the nicer the surrounds were.
I spent Monday through to Wednesday at conference, which was very tiring but a great experience. On Thursday, I headed back to Sydney to meet Damien and start our short trip. We went to Chinatown and found this restaurant called "Mamak" which is what we (Singaporeans) call the Indian men who make the roti prata. The place sold Singaporean food, mostly Malay and Indian dishes like kangkong sambal belachan, ayam berempah, kari kambing and roti prata. Yum..... I remembered reading about this place in some magazine and apparently it's owned by Singaporeans. The food was really authentic and it made me yearn to go back to Singapore for another taste...
That night, we headed to Darling Harbour to meet my friend Kirsty for dinner. We ended up at this restaurant called Adria, which had really good cocktails! I just loved the area, and even though there must have been hundreds of pilgrims (for world youth day) at Darling Harbour that night, they didn't bother me too much.
The next day, we headed to the Sydney Aquarium and I had just an absolutely wonderful time. I don't know what it is about me and zoos or aquariums, but I just love that kind of thing. We walked around the city for a bit after that and then later that evening, we went for a Sydney Harbour Sunset Cruise. We took a cruise boat from Circular Quay around the harbour, while having a 3-course dinner. The views were quite beautiful and it was a wonderful experience.
After the cruise, we went to the cinema on George St in the city and got ourselves tickets to see the Dark Knight. We managed to only get tickets for the latest show, which gave us some time to go back to the hotel for a rest. The movie-going experience in Sydney for me was interesting. The movie that was screening in our theatre finished just in time, which didn't give the staff much of a chance to clean the theatre. Then, we were herded away from the theatre entrance to make way for people to come out and it was just a mess. I couldn't understand why they weren't more organised, knowing that there were going to be massive crowds to see this movie.
When we got inside, the rows I thought weren't high enough from each other because the guy sitting in front of me blocked my view with the top of his head. And he wasn't even a tall guy!!! And there was an echo in the cinema! Imagine listening to Morgan Freeman, and he's echoing! I wondered why they didn't take the acoustics into consideration knowing full well that it was going to be a cinema. Sigh.
On Saturday morning, I wanted to go to the Paddington Markets so we walked to Oxford St from the city. It was a big hike and we realised that we did a lot of walking during this trip. When we got to the markets, I found it to be quite pleasant, but just as pricey as the markets in Brisbane. What's with Australians and markets? They're supposed to be cheap.
After Paddington, we went back to Circular Quay to take a ferry to Manly. We had lunch alfresco at one of the Manly restaurants and ordered ourselves a seafood platter which wound up being a 3-tiered extravaganza of a dish. It was massive! A short walk along the beach later and we decided to head back to Sydney.
Saturday night, we watched the rugby. Yup, I went all the way to Sydney to watch the Wallabies play the Springboks on tv in my hotel room. The Wallabies won, which is what we were hoping for. That might lure them into a false sense of security before the clash with the All Blacks next week *chuckle* Damien dragged me out after the game (although I was ready to go to bed) as he wanted to check out the nightlife in Oxford St. It seemed like a gay and lesbian area to me, with all the rainbows and signs on club entrances proclaiming "Gay and Lesbian Proud." Interesting. We kept walking and made a few turns and ended up in god-knows-where. Eventually we found our way back to the city and decided to get cocktails at Darling Harbour. So more walking to Darling Harbour and when we finally got there, we decided we didn't want cocktails any longer...
We finally dragged ourselves back to the hotel and slept in until Sunday morning when we had to check-out. After checking out, we left our bags at the hotel to go to our Sydney Tower Restaurant Buffet. We had our lunch at the top of the Sydney Tower, which was a revolving restaurant quite like the Crown Plaza at the Gold Coast. The views were absolutely amazing and I just thought that the whole city was absolutely beautiful. I stuffed myself like a pig and could barely walk when we left. I felt so uncomfortable!
We went back to the hotel to get our bags, then headed to the train station to go to the airport. The entrance to the station was gated and padlocked so we went to another station. We ended up arriving at the airport 15 minutes too late so we missed our flight. What rotten luck! We managed to get seats on the next available flight, but only after a $50 per person surcharge. Argh... Oh well. Next time, I'll just get a bloody cab to the airport!
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