It is so easy for memories to play tricks on us. What seemed to happen recently can in reality happen many years ago. And what we thought happened a long time ago actually occurred recently. My poor ability at recollection placed our previous trip to Sydney no more than five years ago. The fact of the matter is that we last went to Sydney in March 2015. A whole nine years ago.
Chris and I had differing impressions of our trip back then. He had a more positive recollection of Sydney while I felt Sydney was a cold commercial city. My poor opinion of Sydney I suspect was more a case of bad luck and high expectations combined with poor research. We stayed at a nice neighbourhood but it had poor transport connections and the selection of places we explored was most likely a poor reflection of what Sydney had to offer.
Thanks to Chris’ work, we got a chance to revisit Sydney. I’m a more experienced traveller this time round and thanks to upgrades to internet resources (e.g Google Maps) and social media (Youtube and instagram), my choice of hotel location and places to explore changed significantly from the previous trip.
While it is silly to do the same things again, there are some areas which we chose to explore again, but differently. The suburb of Surry Hills disappointed me in 2015. It felt like a suburb of modern apartments, devoid of soul and character. This time, we approached the suburb from a different direction and used a few interesting places I sourced from my research to orient our exploration of the suburb. This time, the area felt much warmer and inviting. It gave us a better appreciation of the area and allowed us to see beautiful 1900s-1930s federation brick houses and get a real sense of a neighbourhood rather than a tourist destination.
Like a Singaporean and like a kiwi who has seen an exodus of people leaving New Zealand for Australia, we compared prices of everyday items with prices back home. Prices varied widely from fresh food market at Carriage Works to Countdown to Aldi and the local asian grocers. Is it any cheaper than home? A typical Kiwi expression can answer this, and most of life’s questions, “Yeah, Nah”. You can choose to pay a lot or if you shop smart, pay very little. But the variety of fresh produce in Australian supermarkets far exceeded those of New Zealand. Climate differences across the regions and proximity to the rest of the world meant that Australians enjoyed a lot more items all year round. Tomatoes at $2-3/kg in winter is unheard of in New Zealand.
The standouts from this trip were, Surry Hills, Chatswood (surprisingly nice and liveable neighbourhood), the Photography exhibition at the State Library of NSW and Friendship Garden.
We had a good time in Sydney. Thank you for a good experience.
