Why I Never Want to Leave Sydney

We only had a few hours to make plans for our visit to Sydney, but after 16 months of travel, I was starting to get the hang of arriving in a new city with very limited information.

We arrived with a place to stay for the first few nights, an idea of how to get to the city from the airport, and an idea of where to go for breakfast. Beyond that, I had no idea what I wanted to do with our time in Sydney nor how long we were going to stay.

We wandered around Surry Hills neighborhood and eventually found the accommodation I had hastily reserved the night before. It didn’t look great from the outside. We called the number on the door, and the guy said we couldn’t check in for a few hours and that the place may have been overbooked. He’d call us in an hour.

Having some time on our hands, we decided to walk to the Powerhouse Museum.

On the plane, Martin noticed an exhibition was opening today that featured Lego sculptures of DC Comic Book characters. Pretty much the best thing ever.

The exhibit was pretty cool; the theatrical lighting helped create an ambiance of awe. But I kept picturing the artist laughing at me saying “Can you believe it?! I get paid to play with Legos!” Though, by the end of the exhibit, I wanted to play with Legos too.

Yes, this Batmobile was life-size. Clearly, it was the pinnacle of the exhibit.

The rest of the Powerhouse Museum was mindblowingly awesome. It was seriously one of the best museums I have ever visited. The breadth of exhibits (trains to inventions to jewelry to social movements) was impressive and even more so was the depth of each exhibit. I couldn’t take it all in. The social movement exhibit was powerful and full of interesting information. Both Martin and I left wanted to find a cause to believe in that much.

We still hadn’t heard back from our supposed accommodation, so we called the guy back.

No, he did not have a room for us. Well then. It was now almost 5 p.m. on a Saturday of a busy weekend in Sydney. I knew most places in our price range were booked – even the hostel dormitories were booked. So, we splurged and found a place to stay for $150 USD. It was in a posh neighborhood and was a really fantastic room. For one night, it was our home. We moved to a more reasonably priced and considerably more shabby room for the next few nights.

I had caught a chest cold and needed some rest, so we decided to spend an extra week in Sydney instead of going to the Great Barrier Reef. Therefore, we visited the Sydney Aquarium to get our coral reef fix.

Now, we needed a new place to stay for our extra week. We ended up with a granny flat in Abbotsford through AirBnB that was within our budget and had a kitchen with a fully stocked pantry. Plus it had a spectacular view.

The neighborhood of Newtown quickly became my favorite place.

I would move here in a heartbeat. It was filled with delicious vegan food. Thanksgiving came and went without so much as a nod to a cranberry sauce. Instead we splurged at Gigi’s Pizzeria, a vegan pizza joint that specializes in neapolitan style pizza. It was one of the best meals I’ve ever had. I want to try all of their pizzas. Plus, their vegan tiramisu was heaven. Afterwards, we walked down the street to the vegan butcher and picked up some veggie patties and veggie sausages – all gluten free. Amazing.