A tale of 5 weeks in Sydney.

Harbour City

I had the (exceptionally) good fortune of being able to spend the better part of a month and more in Sydney. I've sort of fallen in love with that city. I don't think I've ever revealed this anywhere, but I'm a huge sucker for beautiful and amazing cities that are also extremely functional and convenient.

The food

I need to start with the best part. The food is AMAZING. I absolutely really amazingly loved the different cuisines and amazing food. My absolute pastime became roaming around QVB and George Street, just enjoying the ambience and eating tons of food.

Food is rather cheap (for australian standards), and most cafes would get you a really good meal and deal for under 20 dollars, more often than not under 15 dollars too (all australian dollars). Even raw ingredients are cheap, a litre of milk would cost you under 4$, and it'd last me a couple days ez.

Oh, and coming to cafes, I love the cafes. There's so many of them. Sydney definitely has a really nice cafe culture, and a pretty good coffee culture too (looks at flat-white)! I really liked the food there, it was nice, just the right amount of sweet, and perfectly savoury.

A lot of things were unique to Sydney. In particular, the veg pies and the meat pies. Shoutout to mushroom and lentil pie for finally making me stomach my beans! Oh god, I so loved those.

And god knows that those timtams made me gain weight like nothing else. Absolutely delicious and delectable 🤤

The streets

Now this section is gonna be more abstract. I loved the streets. Like, all of them, but mostly around the CBD area. People are laid-back, going about their day. It gave me a sense of normalcy. Contrary to popular opinion, I actually decently like big cities. As long as they're not a clusterfuck. This one wasn't. It was nice and calming. Just like Tokyo. And really pedestrian friendly, lots of walking areas, and whatnot. Really cool.

The Busking

Lots of open, pedestrian friendly places lead to a lot of busking! Isn't that great? I really enjoyed @spideythemenace and @euni.chang on the streets often.

Both usernames referred here are their instagram usernames. I don't particularly like this, but I understand why people would use it.

And, well, a lot of others too. But I definitely loved spidey's amazing performances.

Pedestrian friendliness

I think both of the above points in general coalesce into one, pedestrian friendliness. The city is very well suited for pedestrians, and also for cyclists, with their dedicated cycle lanes, parking spots, and Uber and Lime setting a business up around cycle rental. The small shops and cafes also provide a relaxing ambience, and so do the birds. It's... calming. I don't really know how to put it into words.

The parks

Shoutout to centennial park! These parks are amazing and abundant. Perfect for a nice stroll, and centennial park in particular had an insane amount of sports areas and such.

I was really glad to see that there was a lot of green in the city overall, and that they hadn't just converted all of it into a concrete jungle like most others.

The beaches

Do I need to talk about these? Of course, Sydney has a ton of beaches. More than I could have possibly visited every day for all the 5 weeks.

Sydney has beautiful beaches. Cute beaches. Most importantly, clean beaches. The water was too cold when I went, but it was still an amazing feeling to walk on sand, feeling it slip between your toes. It felt serene and calming.

There are also really cool coastal rock formations, and there are beaches facing both the east and the west, so there are plenty of opportunities to see both sunrises and sunsets.

Coast

Arguably, the above is a subpoint of this, but eh. Sydney has a long coastline, and it makes really good use of that. The Bondi-Coogee trail is a must-do, and then there's plenty of stuff to do around pyrmont bridge area and darling harbour too. Of course, explore the areas around lavender bay and Milson's point and Kirribilli as well. It's all really beautiful.

Public transit

Now this leaves a bit to be desired. I never figured out the bus routes, and the metros (is that what they call it there?) can leave much to be desired. They're slower than me just walking to the destination often times.

But, there are some really good things going on about these too! First off, I LOVE the tap and pay system. It's really neat (but can be messed up if you forget to pay/tap on but don't tap off/things like that). And the ferries. Of course, the ferries. Oh god, I love the ferries. I want more ferries and more wharfs damn it!

Conclusion?

I love that city. It's beautiful. Functional. Good food. Good coffee. Good life. There are some things it can do better, and of course, I don't like the australian thing of having to use a VPN everywhere for everything because that was just annoying and I didn't want the government to have my face ID for everything.

I wish there was a japanpics equivalent for Sydney, because I would so dig that. In any case, I wish I could live there. I am already making plans to. And that's as good a compliment as any any city will ever get from me.