Sunday, 11 October 2015 19:21
Cheerio Sydney Featured
Cheerio Sydney. We're off to the Gold Coast - Coolangatta, Queensland for a few days at the beach.
It's a beautiful 61 degrees as we depart Sydney on Virgin Airlines - Delta's Australian partner.
At the Sydney Airport coffee shop we coincidentally happened to sit next to Vern, Darcy and Tom - Tom owns a de-humidifier company in Owatonna, MN, USA. They are in Australia trying to grow the market share here. They knew many people from Mayo in Owatonna - it is definitely a small world!
It was great Sunday morning, in flight, to think about the highlights of Sydney: the people, by far, are the winning card. The Sydney Australians are warm, welcoming and gracious, friendly, outgoing, confident, and very proud of their city.
There are definitely awesome sites to see that were made all that more outstanding by the people we encountered along the way. The Opera House is remarkable to see - truly an architectural wonder and once you learn the story of the Danish architect himself, it's even more interesting. The Sydney Harbor bridge, though we did not climb it, is taller than you can imagine - all you have to do is look below at the monstrous ocean liners that cross beneath it to understand why it needs to be that large.
We were very impressed by the Bondi Beach area - it took us a bit back to the 50's as there was a Volkswagen Vanagen Bus gathering and posters announcing the Beach Boys concert coming in November.
Being foodies, The food experiences were good - just not great food. Our favorite dining experience was Friday evening, before we went to Les Miserables at the Capitol Theatre, The Bear Bar - a neighborhood bar with minimal but very tasty food choices and a nice selection of interesting beers. I tested a Jamaican Ginger beer and will most likely have it again. The Bear Bar experience was definitely enhanced by Andy the owner (see previous post). Bob says the most tasty thing he's had was toast with Vegemite (just for you Mike D.)
We did love the coffee at Single Origin and again, the people there made this a memorable stop. The hotel registrar recommended Single Origin on our first day. We were so impressed that we wanted to return for brekkie and coffee and Billy, the host, remembered us by name when we returned on our last day in Sydney.
All in all, we highly recommend Sydney and given the opportunity would return again. We have felt so welcomed to this wonderful country and are definitely looking forward to the next stop on our journey: the Gold Coast at Coolongotta, Queensland.