Day 3 in Sydney was another beautiful day and another day when we logged over 10,000 steps walking around the city.
We started with another wonderful breakfast at the hotel, then I spent some time editing the photos we have taken on the first two days in Sydney. Then we ventured out in search of the King’s Cross neighborhood, an area that had been recommended to us. We found it, but it took some serious climbing to get there – it is a couple of hundred feet up an escarpment behind the hotel.
King’s Cross seems to be a cozy neighborhood filled with nice homes (many with wrought iron railings, ala New Orleans) and funky little shops. Our prize was McDonald’s where we got two very nice ice cream cones for A$0.50 each – about 40 cents US – cheaper than we could get those cones at home!
It doesn’t take much to thrill us.
The public spaces in Sydney continue to impress us. There seem to be small parks everywhere. This strikes me as a very pleasant, livable city.
Next we adventured onto the subway. This was a bit daunting as the Sydney subway is a “tap on, tap off” fare system. You don’t buy a ticket or a fare card (though that, too, is an option). Instead you just charge the ride to your credit card by using the smart phone’s wallet. I made sure that both Marlene and I were set up to do this, so we took the subway from King’s Cross to City Hall – just two stops (and just A$1.00). We had to wait only a couple of minutes (trains run very frequently here) and took a ride on a double-deck driverless subway train. Oh, it is a brave new world!
We were impressed with the subway and were also impressed with the many bike paths in downtown Sydney. Like Barcelona, Sydney does much to encourage the use of bicycles and scooters.
After exiting the subway at City Hall we walked toward Chinatown in search of thrift shops. We didn’t find any large thrift shops and I am not sure we ever made it to Chinatown but we did find a food mall that was wall-to-wall Asian restaurants and fast food joints filled with young Asians. There are a LOT of people of Asian descent in Sydney.
We then walked about a mile to an area that had several thrift stores – Surrey Hills. It reminded me a bit of the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco. It had a “hippie” vibe.
On the way to the thrift stores we happened upon an Aldi. Marlene was thrilled to see it. We bought some bread and chips.
We had sandwiches with the bread and ate them with the chips. Then we played cards and Marlene continued to school me.