10/01 - Daytrip to Manly

Woke up in the middle of the night with the old guy snoring like crazy, could not fall back asleep, so I went to the toilets. When I came back , I woke up the guy (scaring him to death) and asked him if he could try to sleep on his side, he grunted but did it!! (VICTORY!) After that we were able to sleep (he had managed to wake 3 of us up).

Woke up properly around 9.30am, shower then breakfast and we decided what to do with our day, and chose to go to Manly. Today all the transports are caped at $2.50, so for that price we took: bus, train and ferry both ways!

Love the view from the plateform of Circular Quay train station

ferry ride itinerary

We took the ferry at Circular Quay, the ferry passes right by the Opera House! We also saw for the 1st time Sydney's skyline, this is quite a thing! We crossed the entire bay of Sydney to reach Manly. Manly is on the other side of the bay, with one side in the bay the other facing the Pacific ocean.

Leaving Circular Quay

 

passing along the Opera House

panoramic view of central Sydney

Opening of the Bay towards the Ocean

In Manly, we had lunch in a park and then headed for the main beach (facing the ocean). Wow, it was crowded! I guess this is what you get for going to the beach on a Sunday... Because we are facing the ocean, the water is quite turbulent and as a matter of fact, there are only 2 small areas for people to swim in, the rest of the water is banned or for surfers...

Lovely small ferry terminal of Manly

picnic in the park

1st sight of Manly beach

left - surfers area / right - (parked like animals) swimmers area

We found a spot, not too far from the water, but facing the "forbidden" section. We rrested for a while, soaking up the sun, reading and listening to some music. We went in the water one after the other (to keep an eye on the bags). You can't really swim, but we enjoyed the waves, it was really good. The water was a bit cold at 1st, but with the heat, it was welcomed!

soaking up the sun!

Around 4pm, we decided to go for a walk. The view was stunning and the flora on the ocean side reminded me of the south of France and the "Garrigue", but once on the other side (the one facing the bay), vegetation was very lush, a bit like a tropical forest.

last look at Manly Beach

meet and greet with the locals!

starting our walk around Manly

couple selfie with the Pacific Ocean

  

"Guarrigue" scenery

lush scenery

crossing Collins Beach and its waterfall

  Collins Beach is located on the Bay side of Manly, thus flat water and lovely quiet area

secured swimming area (against sharks??)

new exotic birds!

We arrived back in Manly harbour and had dinner before boarding the next ferry. D. had fish&chips (because according to him, you can't go on a Sunday to the beach without having a Fish&Chips...) and I had some Quesadillas from a Mexican place.

The ferry boat is quite interesting, you can stir it from both directions (no front or back), which is really handy to go from one pier to the next, but because of that both times I miscalculated where to sit for the view...

On the way back, the sun was low and setting over Sydney and the opera. The view was priceless!!! And I manage to get great photos!

Golden Hour on the Opera House and Harbour Bridge

Back at the hostel, another shower was needed and bed. (we are sunburned....)

Walked 9,2 km today
Slept in a mixed dorm (full of smelly guys), in Glebe Point YHA, in Sydney

09/01 - Walking around Darling Harbour and Hyde Park

For our 1st night I did pretty well, I only woke up once for 1h (from 3.30 to 4.30), during that time I finished an email that I started in bed last night (but clearly was too tired to finish!). I fell back asleep until 10.30am!

10.45 we did some expenses (we are writing down everything we spend, this is the secret to stay on budget!) then by 11am we left the hostel and followed our street, Glebe Point Road. We bought some nuts and fruits and went to the local Saturday market (situated on the grounds of a primary school).

We had "brunch" there. It is a reallytrendy/bohemian style market, selling clothes, jewllery and food with also live music (and the girl was not bad, she was alternating between reknown music and originals). Our lunch was Turkish, it looked a lot healthier than it was... I was a bit disappointed with mine. We also met more of those white exotic bird with a black beak.

Glebe Market - Bohemian atmosphere and live music

same exotic bird and "brunch"

We headed to Darling Harbour crossing a park with a self-service BBQ (I never saw that before): AMAZING!!!

self-service BBQ in Wentworth park

We crossed the footbridge in Darling Harbour to see the harbour from above and then we walked along it to reach the Chinese garden of Friendship. You have to pay a small fee to get in, so we decided it will be for another day (plus we still had the one from shanghai in our mind and did not want to spoil it).

Darling Harbour footbridge

left side and right side

Instead we went to Hyde Park, visited a memorial and lied down on the grass. Listened to some music, read a bit...just chilling out!

Anzac Memorial - Hyde Park

 

Around 5pm, we went grocery shopping and took the bus to go "home". Once in the hostel, it was time to take a look at the kitchen. It is massive and well organised, unfortunately a few essentials are missing (oil, foil, suger...), but too late we already done our shopping. Before dinner we rested for a while (and I fell deeply asleep). Around 9pm we had dinner and we prepared wraps for tomorrow.

We were thinking of going to the Blue Mountains with Simon, but we have not seen him today, so we might change our mind. We need to take advantage of the Opal cap being at $2.50 for the whole day!!

I updated the blog until 2am (stupid nap earlier...), and fell asleep like a baby afterwards!

Walked a lot today
Slept in a mixed dorm (full of smelly guys), in Glebe Point YHA, in Sydney

08/01 - We are in FREAKING Sydney!!!

The flight attendants switched the lights back on between 6 and 7am, just before landing, around 8.30am we flew over Sydney, and quite low, we could see the Opera House and the bridges, unfortunately we were seating in the middle and I could not take a picture...

We landed around 9am and it was 11am by the time we left the airport. In 2 hours we managed to go through passport control, pick up all our luggage, reorganised what we had in them (and put seperately medecines + chocolate for customs, I queued for "something to declare" and in the end they just asked me if it was for my personal use, I said yes, she told me to got straight to the exit). Damien got an Australian SIM card and in the meantime I tried to use the Wifi (with success this time!).

This is when I got the bad news that my grand-father (my dad's dad) passed away. I tried to be in touch with my family but it is the middle of the night over there. I am really sad not to be with  my family and especially my dad in this hard time. But it is also a relief, because he was suffering a lot, and really wanted to let go and join my grand-ma.

Damien told me he had a surprise for me in the center of town, so instead of going straight away to the hostel, we took a train to Circular Quay. When you step out you are on the harbour where you can take cruises but also see The Opera House!! but this was not the surprise...

 

We walked along the pier for a little while (with all the suitcases), and nothing was happening, so I was starting to get a bit annoyed when suddently my ex-housemate Billy showed up in front of me! What a surprise!!! Unfortunately we only got 1h together (but it is so much better than nothing at all!) because he and his girldfriend's family were heading back to London that day.

We had take away lunch on the pier, where we met our first exotic bird! They were actually a lot of them, walking among pedestrian.
 

Then headed to the hostel by metro and light rail. Once we checked-in, we also signed up for the organised BBQ for $5 (so cheap!). We repacked our bags (moving bag and travelling bag), made our beds, got settled.

We decided to go for a stroll in a park along the water. We sat on a bench, facing the waterand the sun. This is when I managed to get my dad on the phone. I managed to stay strong, but I wished I could hold him tight...

Back at the hostel, we went to the BBQ on the roof top, it was really nice, we discussed with a guy from Chile and another one from Germany, both of them have just been working for the last 7 months in New-Zealand. We saw the sun set, but by 8pm I was too exhausted to stay up.

In bed, I started to write an email but after the first 5 lines I was deeply asleep...

Slept in a mixed dorm (full of smelly guys), in Glebe Point YHA, in Sydney

07/01 - 13h layover in Shanghai

 
So we landed at 6am, Chinese time, we went through security and customs, we unfortunately had to take our luggage back with us...but luckily we found a locker room for the day. We spent 2h or so trying to sort ourselves out (luggages, unsuccessfully looking for an internet connection, having breakfast, getting money and leaving for town).

 

Around 10am we took, I think, the fastest train on earth, in less than 10 minutes we went from the airport to town, doing at some point 431km/h.... Then we took the metro to reach the town center.

We walked towards the Bund and along it for a while. Shanghai was foggy and super cold... We were surprised by the architecture, it is a pretty modern city.

After walking along the Bund we headed towards the old quarter, there we bought some roasted chestnuts and visited Yu Garden. It is a big oriental garden (with pagodas and ponds) and the entry only costs 30 RMB per adults.

Finally we had lunch, in what seems to be a popular place (massive queue outside for take away dumplings). We tried some kind of beans (a mix between sugar snaps and peas in pod), Pork dumplings and vegetable ones. I realised that I was not a fan of dumplings (I much prefer fried momos).

Then we took the metro again to go to People's Square, but after 15 min of walk, tiredness won us over and one of us (me....) was sleep walking, ready to drop dead any second.

We took the wise decision to go back to the airport on the super speedy train!! And before check-in we found a corner and took a 30 min nap!

 

 

The nap actually did me some good! We picked up our bags and went to check them in. We ask about vacancies in the plane, but the guy told us it was full (too bad...), we went through security, then found a place to plug our phones and had a "gourmet" takeway dinner (fries, water, chestnuts and hot brownie with a bit of ice-cream on top!).

7.35pm take off. We had time to watch 1 movie and had some kind of dinner before tiredness took over our body! Within minutes we were sleeping. We both woke up a few times, but never for long, the 10h flight flew by!! When they switched the lights back on around 6/7am (Australian time), we nearly had a good night sleep!

We landed in Sydney around 9am.

Slept on our Air China seats

06/01 - Here we go again

On the road again!

This morning we left my cousins's house in Paris suburb quite early. We did not sleep much, and are a bit worried about our luggage's weight...

We arrived in Paris' Airport, Roissy-Charles de Gaulle around 9am. The counters to check in opened 15 minutes after wearrived, we were amoung the first ones to check in. We had to run a little bit around to pay for the extra luggage. Once we were all done, we had breakfast, and I wrote some postcards.

12:30 take off. The plane is nearly empty, most of the chinese relocated to the seats in the middle of the plane (we understood later that it was to get more room to sleep). The standards of Air China are not the same as British Airways (that we used to and from India)...

During our 11h flight, I watched 2 movies and several one episode of various TV series. I barely slept, and when I did it was not really confortable.

We arrived in Shanghai (China) at 6am local time, but it was around 11.30pm in France, so the not sleeping idea was really silly, we actually skipped the whole night...

barely slept in our chair in Air China flight