Sydney Holiday

Two trips in 3 months! Covid cannot deny me any longer... I am smitten by the flying bug and with air fares becoming more competitive these days, holidays further afield are more attractive.

For the Australia Day long weekend, I booked a short trip to Sydney to watch the fireworks and tick visiting Sydney Fish Market off my list. We also did plenty in between, but I always liked to tease Gaz by commenting my trips to places such as Sydney and Japan were not complete because we did not stop by the fish market. He does not understand why we need to go to smell rich (ahem) like those while it becomes my excuse to go back. 

To fit our schedules, we had salmon sashimi at the fish market at 9 in the morning. Not a good idea... I had runny stools afterwards. It served as a good detox because I had been eating too much anyway!

On Australia Day, we went to the harbour to catch the fireworks that starts from 9.30pm. There was a park in front of the museums that people could congregate to watch the fireworks. The turnout was decent but it did not feel as crowded as the events in Melbourne. It suited us just fine. We found a place to sit to wait at 7.30pm and were rewarded with short bursts of fireworks from 9pm, water activities in the harbour,  and music from the AD concert across the harbour.

The Opera house lighted up with various themes like the flag, yellow and green, indigenous colours, flowers etc. I must say that Sydney really knows how to put on a show! The 4 or 5 short bursts of fireworks before the big display started was great. Many families with young children watched that and then made their way home to avoid the crushing crowd. 

The final fireworks were about 5 minutes long. It filled the skies with glittery stars, colours and sometimes unexpected blossoms of stars would appear out of nowhere. It is one of the best fireworks I have seen. There were none from the bridge, only from barges and some fanning out from the Opera house but it was fantastic.

Less so was the journey out of the precinct. Even though I had plenty of space around me to enjoy the earlier fireworks (no sweaty bodies or body odours nearby) when everyone made their way to the train station, the crowd was concentrated into one big sea of people. We made the long trek to the station entrance only to be turned away to another. There were a lack of signs and crowd control overall. The light rail (or as Melburnians call them, the trams) was not running for crowd safety, to avoid running over people. So we had to walk about 45 mins back to our hotel.

On our way home, we wanted to get some dinner but we found that none of the convenience stores displayed any prices! This is a very odd thing and is non existent in Victoria, thankfully. I spent a while observing and realised the prices do not appear on the cash register until the shopkeeper announces it to the customer. An icy pole was $10, 3 small items were $40 and people were just handing over their money like the RBA did not just raise rates 13 times in quick succession! The shopkeepers could have been rolling a dice behind the counter and then adding a 0 behind each number that came up for each item, but this practice is apparently legal. We did not partake.. it was a diet sleep that night.