Sydney Post Part 2: Sightseeing

Hey! Here is my part 2 post of being in Sydney~ My first post was about the shopping which you can read HERE in case you missed it. As mentioned in this blog post's title, I will be talking about the locations that I visited which were some of Sydney's tourist attractions. I wasn't able to visit heaps of them but I definitely did more sightseeing than shopping!

Please be aware that this post may become picture-heavy...

Also, this post is NOT a post about full details of areas I visited like its history and date founded etc.! Everything I write is based on my own knowledge without any research, so do excuse any incorrect names and whatnot... and don't tell me to do some research because I don't feel that that is necessary. After all this is not a travel blog, just a documentation of my trip.

I really don't know where to begin so I'll just go in order of date visited.

My second night in Sydney was a Friday night and it was really enjoyable. We caught the train into town to look at the CBD shops (mostly on Pitt Street) and walked through a park to see the Christmas lights display/choir singing.

I am terrible with names of places... this is why I don't suit being a travel blogger/tour guide :( But all I remember is that it is one of the biggest parks in Sydney? I really should have documented everything my uncle was saying when we went sightseeing!

Blurry picture because I was walking while snapping the photo. I can't recall a time where I have visited a public park at night, before I did in Sydney. People were walking their dogs and there were a few joggers. It wasn't scary walking through the park at night because people were still around and the lights were pretty bright so you could see your surroundings quite well.

THIS was what surprised me the most about this city. Apparently it's normal for bats to be flying around at night?? My Sydney cousins were all like meh about it because they've seen them plenty of times before (of course) but when I first saw bats in the sky I was heaps shocked and terrified D: Bats are considered to be harmless to humans so I shouldn't have been so terrified lol... though after a while I found it to be cool :D

After walking out of the park, we had to cross the road to see the Christmas lights/whatever was going on at the time. There were so many people there, it was surprising.

A whole bunch of people sitting on the ground watching/listening to the choir singing Christmas carols

Me and my family only ended up staying at this place for about 10 minutes only... sorry to say but I guess we were all feeling a bit bored :/ I'm just being honest by the way. We thought there would be more exciting things happening but we didn't think there would be once we were there so we walked back to the train station to go home. Note that we were also feeling really tired =|

Speaking of the train station, this is what it looked like. I can imagine this being more full when people have work/school

We hired a van for 3 days for all of us to fit in (12 of us) so that we could travel together to places that didn't have public transport services. Did I mention that 12 of us lived under the same roof for 9 days?? Haha, it was pretty fun! My grandma, 3 aunties, uncle, mum, 5 cousins and me :D

Drive to the Blue Mountains/3 Sisters and Scenic World

This image was taken from a small cliff with railing that everyone could safely stand and look over to see the 3 Sisters and the Blue Mountains. Correct me if I'm wrong but I do believe that it is impossible to climb these 3 Sisters... I think that's why they're only for an attraction.There is however, a walk to the 3 sisters where there is a path to reach them without walking through or over them.

Here are Sydney's famous '3 Sisters' which are huge standing rocks that look like 3 people (hence the name)

I zoomed into the 3 Sisters picture above so you can see where people walk to, to get to one of the 3 sisters :) There is safe railing again

We ended up walking to this railed area too! And I took pictures of my view:

 View of the Blue Mountains from the 3 Sisters

 Others coming down too. There were many tourists doing the walk!

Standing underneath a 'sister'

A candid shot of me for the lolz. Casually looking up and taking pictures

Wore my mum's walking shoes since they were comfy and all I had brought with me to the trip were sandals

My family and I ended up walking further down the walk but stopped at the half way point. Going down wasn't tiring, but then we realised how painful it would be for our legs to walk all the way back up the steps T_T I just want to say that I am SO freaking glad that we didn't complete the walk (even though it would have been an awesome accomplishment) because my legs were killing me going back up those steps! My thighs were aching and luckily there were some 'resting' points for drink breaks and sitting down. Each rest point we reached, we stopped. Unlucky for me though... because I didn't have my drink bottle with me! My mum was carrying it for me in her handbag but she only walked a quarter of the way instead of half where the rest of us did so I forgot to get it from her after she stopped. I was thirsty and struggling lol, it was the best feeling to be able to drink my water again after completing the walk back. I think it was around 1 km from where we began.

After this we went to the Blue Mountain Scenic World where we rode on the Scenic Railway and Scenic Cableway which were both very enjoyable, but I found the Scenic Railway to be more fun and exciting =] I only have pictures of these on my Facebook since they have family members in them and I'd like to keep photos like these private from my blog.

Bondi and Cronulla Beach

Sydney's most famous beach is Bondi beach and I'm glad that I had the opportunity to visit it. I'm actually not a huge fan of going to the beach but I did enjoy my time at the beaches I visited in Sydney. Cronulla beach is smaller with less people and I swam in it for about an hour. I didn't get to swim at Bondi beach because I didn't bring bathers so instead I just dipped my feet in the water.

This was a smaller beach near Bondi. I don't recall the name of it unfortunately

See where those beach houses are? We had to walk down there to get Bondi. It took about 10 minutes to walk there from this beach

On our walk to Bondi, we came across two outdoor pools. We thought it was free to swim in them but it turns out that you have to pay to swim in these. I guess it's for people who don't want to swim at the beach but still want to enjoy being in the water at Bondi beach

 View of Bondi from the balcony, walking over the pools

Wind blowing, my hair's a mess and my 3/4 jeans are half wet from the small waves... but I'm still smiling brightly ahaha

I noticed that I got a tan from being at the beach when I didn't even intentionally tan :( I wore sunscreen but I don't think that does much for tan prevention.

The days I went to the beach were only around 22-25 degrees C so they weren't very hot days. Luckily for all the 9 days I was in Sydney, it wasn't hot which was perfect for daily outings. It was humid so t-shirts and shorts were fine to wear.

Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House

Everyone around the world should know these very popular attractions! This was my second to last day in Sydney. I was actually feeling starstruck when I saw these famous icons for the first time... because I had always seen them on TV and in pictures. Seeing it right in front of my eyes for the first time was cool.

 Tried my best to have both of these attractions in the same photo

Making our way to the steps of the Opera House

On the steps now, yay ^_^

The view inside the glass around the Opera House

Me sitting on the steps. Finally a non-aviators picture for you guys

Unfortunately my family and I left Sydney on New Years Eve so we missed the epic fireworks :( Anyway, the day before NYE was looking like this... people setting up for the celebrations

I didn't get to be really close to the bridge but I took a picture and noticed that Luna Park is down on the other side. It's Sydney's theme park which I sadly didn't get to see :( Hopefully next time... I really want to see because I like visiting theme parks

Sydney's City/CBD

On the same day as seeing the Harbour Bridge and Opera House, I also went to the city to explore some more. I didn't take many pictures...

There was a man kneeling on the right who was using sand(?)/chalk(?) to do this artwork on the ground. It's not pretty but it did look amazing... such talent.

Randomly walking. I didn't know that Sydney had a 'monorail' like in a Simpsons episode x)

A 2-storey KFC and an old-looking building. It's just something different to my city. We have no KFCs like this

 Walked past this... rainfall/waterfall thing? Ahaha I have no idea what to call it but it was really pretty *_*

This is the end of my Sydney part 2 sightseeing post! I had so much fun and 9 days wasn't even enough haha, it flew by so quickly. I really want to come to Sydney again to explore more and shop more... I know there's just so much more for me to see and do there, amazing! I also want to visit other cities in Australia (especially Melbourne) as well as countries all around the world ^o^ Maybe the next time I visit Sydney, I could meet up with bloggers there :)

I probably forgot to mention some things but if I remember, I'll probably tweet about it. I hope this post wasn't too boring, after this post I will get back into doing beauty posts :D

To get it started I'll show you my fail jars that I brought with me in Sydney:

I thought that these would be perfect for travel (foundation and tinted moisuriser in the jars)

But no!

• Permanent marker rubbed off so I couldn't read which was which *scratches head*
• Only ONE of them could open, but then a few days later it wouldn't open anymore!

 

Having my face and hand cream in these jars were fine however with foundation... it was like they made the lids permanently stuck because no matter how hard I tried to unscrew, they just won't budge. And they still won't open *sigh* my wasted foundation and tinted moisturiser forever stuck in those jars! I couldn't use them for the whole trip so I resorted to my stick foundation which made my skin dry :( Thank goodness my face has recovered since being back. My lesson learnt is that I should use travel bottles instead (I'll need to buy some) or bring my full-sized products despite being heavy and taking up space in my bag.

A travel-related questjen for you guys:

Where is the best place that you've traveled to?

My answer: Hong Kong!

I went there when I was really young so I didn't get to enjoy it to the full extent i.e. the shopping, photo-taking but I did like it very much! I definitely want to visit again ^-^