After driving most of the day, we made it to Sydney late afternoon on Monday. We looked up some campsites online and found an unofficial one up at the Balls Head Reserve. We found the area, and it had picnic benches, BBQ, toilets and a great view of the Sydney harbour bridge, which was to be our first sighting of the bridge. As there is a 1 hour time difference between Sydney and Brisbane, it gets dark a little later here, which is more convenient for us. By the time we'd found our spot and cooked up our dinner, it was starting to get dark before 8pm. We looked at the view of the city from day to night, and it looked completely different. The lights on the tall buildings looked really cool glowing in the dark night sky. I had an instant liking of the city, even if we haven't actually explored it yet. As we arrived later in the day, we'll save the exploring around the city until tomorrow.

We got up and had breakfast overlooking the bridge on the picnic bench and as it was a lovely day today, we said we'd go do the touristy thing and see the bridge and opera house and go into Central Sydney. We knew our biggest obstacle in the city would be parking. We looked up free parking in the centre and it was basically non-existent. So we decided that we'd take the train into the city for the day. At least then we don't have to worry about topping up expensive parking metres. Waverton train station is right near balls head, so we parked the car near the station where we could get free parking, and took the train into the city. The tickets were only $5 dollars each, so I am pretty sure the price of the ticket will be cheaper than parking the car all day. The trains are really good here, double deckers, and you can change the way the seats face, and they are modern clean trains. England needs to take notes on their train networks. We took the train to Circular Quay, which is the main central station for the Opera House.

Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House

Once we got off the train, we noticed how busy it was in and around the station, there were swarms of people everywhere. We got a closer sighting of the harbour bridge, which was even more impressive. When we walked outside the train station, we were in the harbour and there was a huge cruise liner in the port, partially blocking the view of the bridge from where we were first standing. We walked towards the signs for the opera house, the view of the bridge was always changing to different angles. There were thousands of other tourists all trying to get their classic pictures of Sydney, but hey why not, it's one of the most iconic cities in the world. I was not disappointed, far from it, what I have seen i've loved so far. There was a sculpture of a rhino with zebra stripes, the harbour bridge behind it, so we stopped to pose for a picture there. We carried on walking towards the opera house and noticed that there were loads of runners all going for it along the boardwalk. It's the place to be in Sydney for sure. We eventually walked past the opera house cafe, bar/restaurant which you can sit outside with great views overlooking the harbour bridge and opera house. Would be lovely to stop here, but I think it would be really expensive. We finally got our first sighting of the opera house in all it's glory too. It's an amazing structure and you can only really appreciate it's architecture from a distance. We carried on walking up and around the oath towards it. There is some construction works going on outside it at the moment, which kind of ruins the aesthetics for me. There were even more runners flying past us by the opera house. While walking around, we noticed that parking was around $8 dollars an hour in the city centre, so we're glad we made use of buying a train ticket.

Botanical Gardens

When we walked around the front of the opera house, we came to the botanical gardens, so decided to walk through some of it. If you thought it was busy for runners by the opera house, you haven't seen anything yet. There were swarms of people all running in groups together, it was like being on a pedestrian highway. You had to watch out for them, or they would trample on you. I couldn't believe how many of them were running around the park on a hot summers day, crazy if you ask me. Perhaps they all have running clubs on their lunch breaks. We walked along and there were some lovely flowers and trees which we passed on the way around the gardens. There was also another rhino, this time decorated with colourful buttons. We wanted to get to Mrs Macquarie's chair in the gardens, this is suppose to be one of the best viewing points of the harbour bridge and the opera house where you can see both together.

Mrs Macquarie's Point

We carried on following the signs to Mrs Macquarie's chair and kept on getting passed by the runners. You certainly can't go for a relaxing walk in the gardens at certain times of the day that's for sure. We probably came at the wrong time of day to be honest. So we tried to find Mrs Macquarie's chair, following the signs, and found the point, but we didn't find her chair. I don't know if there is a physical chair or if it's just a made up name for this particular point for photo taking. Anyway, we took pictures from around that area and found the sea rocks, which is a slightly different viewpoint from everyone else's and took some round there. When John got bored of taking pictures, we decided to get some lunch, he got the hungry jacks, which is a McDonald's rival and I got some lovely chips. We went and sat on a bench overlooking the harbour.

Wolf Creek 2

After that, it was time to hit the shops, so we went for a wander around trying to find the main shopping area. We found it and walked around for a couple of hours. We also saw an event cinema, so thought we'd check out what's on. There were a few films that caught our eye, but while we're in Australia, we thought we'd watch a film that's set in Australia. Wolf Creek 2 is on, as we saw the first one back home we thought we'd watch that later this evening. It may not be a good idea watching a film about backpackers getting kidnapped and murdered while we're here, but we'll give it a go. So while we waited for the film to come on, we went had Pizza Hut, healthy food day! It was good and we haven't had pizza since in Peru, so it was well overdue by now. By the time we finished we walked back and went into the cinema, we were slightly late, so it had just started. It was spoken in German with English subtitles. I thought surely they can't have the while film in German. Anyhow, luckily for us, it was just at the start, then after that, it was in English. It turned out to be quite a good film, although as we're camping around in the car, it did make us more wary of where we'll camp from now on. After the film, we took the train back to the car and went to camp, checking all around us to make sure there was nobody like Mick around us.

Bondi Beach

The next day, we awoke safely knowing there weren't any guys like Mick around us. We decided to go to the famous Bondi beach. It's about a 40 minute ride away from the centre, so we decided to drive there. When we got there, the Bondi car park charged $8 dollars an hour, so it would be an expensive trip to the beach. We decided to try and find somewhere to park further away from the beach. If you go up the back roads away from the main road, you can find free parking, so we just parked up there and headed to the beach. The beach was ok but not amazing, it was quite busy with people bathing and lots of groups of people surfing. People had said Manly beach was better than Bondi, but this is more famous, so we thought we'd come here. The weather was great for about 2 hours, then it started to get grey and overcast. It was too cool to sunbathe, so we left the beach and headed to a park for a picnic. Later on we drove back to Balls Head to cook up dinner, it was raining, so it was pretty miserable trying to cook on the stove in the rain. We ended up eating dinner in the car and watched some telly on the iPad, making some use out of our data on the phone SIM card.