Monday - Sydney

We decided that in order to make our 8 a.m. flight from Auckland to Sydney, and to avoid rush-hour traffic on the way to the airport, we had better leave the apartment at 6 a.m. We arrived at the airport in plenty of time to spend our last fifteen dollars in New Zealand currency on breakfast.

Although getting out of Auckland on an international flight was much easier than getting into Auckland on an international flight, it wasn’t as laid-back as flying domestically within New Zealand. This time we had to check in and show ID, get our bags scanned, and go through security. For this leg of the trip, we flew Virgin Australia. Their representatives demonstrated some of the stereotypical differences between Kiwis and Aussies: Kiwis tend to be like large teddy bears, but Aussies are a little more like gruff lumberjacks.

Airport Link light rail train

Passing through Sydney immigration and customs was somewhat expedited by automated systems that scanned our passports and compared them with other digitized documents, but we still had to declare that the only food we were bringing into the country consisted of cookies and leftover trail mix. At the adjacent train station, we bought passes for a week’s worth of unlimited public transportation and then hopped on a train that took us into the city. After three weeks spent largely in small towns and wilderness areas, concentrating on natural scenery, Nancy commented that she felt like we were starting a whole new vacation in urban Sydney.

Metro Hotel 

When we got off the train at Museum Station we could not find a lift, so we had to heft our luggage up several flights of stairs to ground level, and then schlep our bags several blocks to our lodging: the Hotel Metro on Pitt Street. Even though it was only 11:00 a.m., our room was available, so we were able to check in and freshen up before setting out to explore the city.

Town Hall on the way to lunch

The first order of business was to get some lunch, since we had eaten a light breakfast on Auckland time (two hours ahead of Sydney) and our stomachs were starting to growl.

From the list that Michael had made of restaurants with good reviews from Trip Advisor's guide to Sydney, we chose a cafe that was supposed to be only two blocks away and started walking. However, when we arrived at the address Trip Advisor had indicated, Workshop Espresso was not there.

Card players in the Celebrity Lounge

So we headed for Esperanto, the next closest restaurant on the list, but the sign at the listed address was for the Tattersalls Club. Michael remembered that Trip Advisor had mentioned something about the restaurant being inside a club, so we went into the lobby and asked the concierge where to find Esperanto.

“Do you want the restaurant, or the café?” she asked.

“The café,” we said, so she told us to take the elevator to the third floor and turn left. Those directions took us to the Esperanto restaurant, which was dark and empty—obviously not open for lunch. We looked in vain for the café, but all we found was the Celebrity Lounge, in which several tables of blue-haired matrons were playing cards. No one seemed to be serving any food.

Kosmos Brasserie

By now we were famished, so we gave up on Trip Advisor and walked up the street to Kosmos Brasserie, which was displaying a tasty-looking selection of salads. At many eateries we have encountered in this part of the world, you can buy your meal by the “tub”; you pay for either a small, medium, or large container, and then fill it with as many of the displayed dishes as you want. The salads at Kosmos tasted as good as they looked—and even though we had asked for “takeaway” and then had sat down at a table outside, the girl who had served us noticed that we had nothing to drink and came out bearing two glasses and a pitcher of water.

Captain James Cook in Hyde Park

Alimentarily satisfied, we were ready to take on the city. Nancy had picked up a brochure at the airport outlining three Sydney walking tours that looked interesting, so we decided to follow one that started close to our hotel and included some city highlights we had planned to visit anyway.

First stop was Hyde Park, with its statue of Captain James Cook. The famous explorer is as significant to the Australians as to the New Zealanders, having discovered the east coast of Australia in 1770.

Second stop was the Australian Museum across the street from Hyde Park. Although there were a couple of exhibits that sounded mildly interesting, we didn't want to spend all afternoon inside (it had been a lovely, warm day) so we decided to save the admission fee and keep walking.

St. Mary's Cathedral

Third stop was St. Mary's Cathedral, a gothic-revival structure begun in the 1860s but finished less than fifteen years ago. Because a Mass of Reconciliation was beginning a few minutes after we entered, we were asked to leave so as not to disturb the congregants.

Hyde Park Barracks

Fourth stop was the Hyde Park Barracks, originally built to house male convicts sent from England to Australia in the early 1800s. Later, the building served as a dormitory for female immigrants (many of them orphans brought in to raise the colony’s ratio of white women to white men), and then as an asylum for infirm and destitute women. Since neither of us knew much about Australia’s history (other than that it had been a British penal colony), we decided to tour the museum so we could learn something.

Dessicated prison rats

Dormitory hammocks

The experience was poignantly horrifying, and utterly fascinating. A glass case in the first room contained the dessicated remains of several rats, to whom the museum was indebted for collecting and thus helping to preserve many of the other artifacts on display. In the rats’ nests between the floors, excavators had found scraps of clothing, chewed up-books, tarnished tableware, delousing combs, and other household items that helped researchers piece together the stories of the people who had lived and worked in the often squalid barracks. Rows of hammocks in the dormitory testify to the crowded conditions endured by the inmates.

To get to the fifth stop on our walking tour, the Art Museum of New South Wales (the Australian province in which Sydney is located), we crossed through another park called the Domain. 

By this time, Michael was trying to avoid any direct contact with sunlight because he had forgotten to apply sunscreen before leaving the hotel. So for more reasons than one, he was glad to go inside again.

Fruit bats on a clothesline

We were surprised but pleased that a display described in the museum’s brochure as “aboriginal art” comprised works by contemporary aboriginal artists rather than the primitive pieces we had expected. One of the most interesting works on view was a wire parabola from which many large, uniformly shaped stones were suspended with exquisite precision. Another arresting piece resembled a clothesline hung with brightly patterned objects that on closer inspection turned out to be fruit bats. (Yes, Michael found this very unnerving, although his chiroptophobia is not as bad as it used to be.)

The suspended stones hover about a foot off the floor

Harbor view from the Royal Botanical Gardens

From the art museum, we headed through the Royal Botanical Gardens to Mrs. Macquarie's Chair, a stone bench at the end of the peninsula where the gardens are located. Mrs. Macquarie was the wife of the governor most responsible for helping New South Wales transition from penal colony to civilized state in the early nineteenth century. She loved the view from this point, and we certainly can understand why. From here, we got our first full, breathtaking view of Sydney’s expansive harbor, with its beautiful bridge and iconic opera house.

Summer flowers in bloom

While wandering back through the botanical gardens, we added several more species to our list of Flora and Fauna We’ve Never Seen Before, including a lot of big white cockatoos that looked as elegant as swans but sounded as raucous as crows.

Water lilies

One might think that after today’s missteps at lunchtime, we would have learned not to trust the addresses in Trip Advisor’s restaurant guide—but one would be wrong. Again at dinnertime, we went searching for a couple of recommended restaurants that could not be found. Persistence paid off, however, when we located the Bistro Papillon, a cozy little place with waiters whose English sounded more French than Australian.

Nancy anticipating her dessert

Michael ordered lapin au citron confit et knepfle maison (rabbit with lemon confit and homemade dumplings). Nancy had cocotte de veau a la provençale (Provençale-style veal casserole). For dessert, Michael tried the bavarois au chocolate (molded layers of creamy chocolate) and Nancy went for the mango sorbet.

Outside the Bistro Papillon

Although we have yet to find an accurate guide to Sydney’s bus routes and have found its bus drivers to be less than helpful, we made it back to the Hotel Metro without getting lost, and were glad to call it a day.