We had gorgeous weather the entire weekend - clear blue skies and warm, up to mid 80s! What kind of winter is that? On Friday we wandered around Sydney all day, checking out the sites.
We had lunch at one of the restaurants along Darling Harbour.
And then walked up to the Harbour Bridge Pylon Lookout - great views of the city and the bridge! Below is a view of downtown Sydney and Circular Quay (the main ferry port).
View of Sydney Harbour Bridge looking towards north Sydney.
Us from the top with the Opera House in the back. I was surprised because in all pictures, the Opera House looks so white, but in real life it looks more off white or cream. Who knew?
We also visited the Rocks Market and checked out some of the items for sale - mostly food during the week so we enjoyed a beer and a soft pretzel and people watched. I think we walked about 8 miles around the city that day! A part of the sole of Eric's shoe even fell off.On Saturday we woke up early - well actually really early, as my watch was still on NZ time so we almost headed out at 6:30am - whoops! Luckily we went back to sleep for a bit before grabbing some breakfast at one of the little cafes near our hostel in Kings Cross. And btw, I was a little nervous about staying in Kings Cross - a lot of the guide books said it was a shady area where you had to be really careful, with drug dealers, prostitutes (it is the red light district of Sydney), homeless people, etc. Well, Eric and I thought it was a really cute area and reminded us a lot of DC (particularly Dupont or Adams Morgan area) - oldish rowhouses, small cafes and bars, lots of outdoor dining areas! And, our hostel handed out goody bags, which included tour discounts and free drink coupons - we manged to get a few free beers all over Sydney, can't beat that! Anyway, so on Saturday we headed out to famous Bondi Beach, east of Sydney. We started off doing the cliff walks that leads from Bondi Beach south, skirting Tamarama Bay and Bronte Bay. Lots of ocean front properties! Eric wants to live there now.
This is Tamarama Bay.
We grabbed some lunch and spent the afternoon on Bondi Beach. I have never seen a beach more packed with people aged 15-35ish! And vendors walking around selling water and ice cream - why don't they have that at Ocean City?? Tons of surfers as well, but the water was freezing. Eric took a dip but it was too cold for me.
That night we had dinner on the water at Circular Quay (nothing beats a meal on the water!). Eric got a meal called something like the 'Great Australian Meat Meal', featuring pork and chicken sausages, ribs, lamb, and steak - he was in heaven. I also enjoyed my steak, and then we walked up to admire the Sydney sights at night.
On Sunday, we spent more time exploring Sydney. This is the Queen Victoria Building, which is now a mall - probably the nicest mall ever!
We took one of the ferries from Darling Harbour to Circular Quay to get a view of the city from the water. 
And then headed down to the Rocks Market, which on the weekend has stalls filled with clothes, jewelery, and souvenirs. Kinda like Eastern Market in DC! 
We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in the Royal Botanical Gardens. Beautiful grounds and flowers and a ton of wild cockatoos (which some people were feeding while the cockatoos climbed all over them - kinda like that guy who feeds the pigeons out of his car along the Mall in DC - or am I the only one who ever saw him? this seemed a little more exotic though, haha). Eric was a big fan of the bats filling some of the trees, and the eels in the ponds (apparently they clean out the ponds on a regular basis and remove all of the eels, but eels always end up back in the ponds. How do they get there? Someone needs to study this).We had a really great (although exhausting) weekend. Eric wants to know why we didn't move there! My favorite comment from Eric: 'Sydney is like Auckland's older, cooler brother who drives a Camaro'. Although I will remark that the Sydney Tower (totally ugly) has nothing on the Auckland Sky Tower!! But we were happy to be back in Auckland, hopefully to return to Sydney again soon!
