Last day in Sydney 😢

Travelling has its highs and lows and so far this trip has been filled with highs even though you would notice I do bitch a bit about the random bullshit that occurs but that’s just me 🥰 the truth be told that I really love Sydney ! What a fantastic city with so much to do that on our last day we were conflicted over what to do .... do we take a ferry to Manly ? Do we take a train to Newtown? Do we go do some art galleries ... there is a Rolling Stones exhibit and that Salvador Dali exhibit or should we suck in some culture on not venture too far ? Honestly that just the tip of the iceberg too as there are so many neighbourhoods that we have not ventured into that it leaves me wondering if a month in Sydney alone would be enough time to do everything that I would want to see and do . One thing we do know is that we love the InCafe and we are sticking to our daily routine of having breakfast there and again no complaints , solid grub there ! But then we get back to our room and discuss our options .... it might rain , we do have our Opal cards with enough to get us somewhere and we didn’t want to kill ourselves walking as much as we have been on the daily so we come to our gruelling decision to go to the Hyde Park Barracks to check out how the colony was begun . 

It was $12 to enter which helps my budget because I’m way over my $100 per day spending limit and my budget is so far out the window it hurts . Trying to keep it cheap and cheerful in Sydney is impossible ... if you think you can do it , please let me know how you did it ? I would say that you would have to pick garbage out of bins to eat and stick to tap water and sleep under a bridge to go on the cheap and trust me we have seen all this during our stay as we have stayed in a hostel this whole time . We have been laughing to ourselves when we see these youngsters coming in the hostel with their packets of cookies which are more then likely their dinner for the next few days .... I’m a fat bastard and I need to feed my belly so that is not gonna cut it lol ! I’m veering off the subject ain’t I .... alright I will stop my rambling about how expensive it is . Don’t get too stressed and please keep reading , I’m sitting in an airport writing this under the pressure of my flight departing so my train of thought is a bit off . When we got to the barracks there was a tour group ahead of us and we dodged them like a bad rash and skipped the intro only to come back 😛 I quite liked it there and listened to every recording on the portable device we were given with our audio guide . Felt like a total nerd but it was really interesting to see how some of the inmates earned their free trip to the colony for some really bad reasons like stealing a hair brush .... OMG 😲!!! Yeah it didn’t take much to face the ultimate punishment back then but for some prisoners the alternate was much worse .... I rather take the risk of travelling 7 months on a boat infested with disease then being hung . Wouldn’t you ? The barracks was actually a place where prisoners had to check into at night and were not held in cells or anything and they basically had to work or were forced into hard labour if they didn’t comply which is really the way Sydney was built . Talk about cheap labour ....

After our visit to the barracks we decided to grab a bite to eat and ended up at this Italian joint called Macchiato which is on Pitt St.and is not too far from where we are staying ... today we are jonesing for pizza 🍕 and boy oh boy did we strike gold here because the food was fantastico!!!! We first split a plate of meatballs and the pomodorro that came slathered on them was to die for and we knew at that moment that whatever type of pizza we ordered we couldn’t go wrong , so since we had our meat filling we opted for something out of the norm for me and we got a Capriciosa which had artichokes , mushrooms , olives and ham on it .... usually I would go all meat but fair is fair and I had my carnivore filling with those meatballs that I’m still dreaming of at this moment . After a meal like that you need to have a walk so we hiked it across to George St. then made our way back to our room where I then proceeded to crash out .... I love taking naps !

After waking from my slumber we decide to end our stay in Sydney by doing one last tour but this time we do the Rocks tour which is run by the same free walking tour company we took on the day of New Years Eve . We took the train down to where we had to meet the tour group down by Cadmans Cottage which is the oldest building in a Sydney and is right beside the statue of Captain Bligh who is the same captain from Mutiny on the Bounty .... he sounds like he was a total jerk ! Anyways when we arrive we end up with the same tour guide from a few days back Adrian ! We had a nice chat and I didn’t want to bother him too much but it was fun going on another tour with him as he does present his tour quite well .... this tour was more grim then the other and he tells us some darker tales about the city and shows us some great bars and by the end of the tour we decide to do one last hoorah and hit up a couple on our way back to our room . Of course at the end of the tour we tip him and head off first to The Hero of Waterloo and we grab a pint and sat on the road as it was busy inside ... apparently there are some hidden tunnels beneath the bar which lead to the harbour where unfortunate drunks would end up becoming enslaved , true story look it up ! After avoiding enslavement we head to Lord Nelson’s brewery which is one of the oldest bars in the city and holds this ongoing argument over which bar is older with the first pub we went to and another bar which we skipped called The Fortune of War . After a few pints Kathleen had enough and I actually chuffed her last one before googling to see if pork scratchings was a thing here and sure as heck it is and is sold at the Globe shops .... I tracked one down and on the way I finally got some picks of those ginormous bats we saw on New Year’s Eve .... they are big! But they are not the “I want to suck your blood “ type of bats 🦇 as they rather eat fruit 😋 .... I get t my scratchings which were not really scratchings and more like pork rinds but none the less I gobbled them up and called it a night ....

I felt as crushed as the car in this picture knowing I had to leave early the next day but alas country #40 on my list of countries I’ve played ice hockey in awaits me and on the other end of the next flight is an ice time with Cam Green and the NZBHL backyard hockey league ! Can’t wait but if I had my way I would definitely make my way back to Sydney in a heartbeat and that being said so should you .