Sydney

There is nothing better than to have a place to call home while traveling; we had an awesome home away from home staying with Ian and Ros for most of our time here. Everyone loves a good ‘Q’ but Australians take BBQing to a whole new level! For example, at one dinner with the Lindsays we made progressive pizzas on the barbie, including the grand finale nutella based dessert pizza… note to self: Tasmanian James Boag’s lager and bbq pizzas = best dinner party idea ever! Also, with a bit of whinging, Ian showed us how to toss some shrimp on the barbie (although he adamantly explained how Australians don’t actually do that to ‘prawns’).

The lovely Brynn was able to sneak away from work to spend a week holiday in Sydney. We took a short trip to the Blue Mountains national park directly after her red eye (oops), for a few hikes and adventuring. The mountains really do look blue when gazing into long deep forest canyons! Here is a shot of us and the three sisters (which have stairs slotted straight down/up)

Sydney is an amazing town, and is comparable to NYC in the busy/bustling category. Imagine always finding something to do, see and explore, and then be able to end the day with a sunset on a smooth sandy beach. Our only suggestion to improve Sydney would be to invest in a better bicycle master plan. One highlight of Sydney was a street art exhibit on Cockatoo Island; Imagine Alcatraz Island with heaps of graffiti art and political art scattered on the walls and old prison cells.

One of the best parts of traveling is meeting random people in random places. We stumbled into a ping pong bar with 8 tables where we eventual all converged onto one table to play a game that Robin’s dad has always termed “around the world ping pong” because you play around the table, but this game was truly around the world as everyone was from different countries. The idea is that everyone hits the ball once, and then continues to the other side of the table to then hit that ball another time. We joined in and were instantly into our competitive nature, and shit talking with what appeared to be the only words that we seemed to all have in common.

Also as fun is to meet up with people you already know in random places! Let us know if you are planning a trip anywhere, cause we’d love to try and meet up like we did with Claire and Adam for the ultra Manly Beach bar crawl and KT for some street food and Bavarian brews