What a beautiful city! We think everyone who has been there would agree with us…you’ll find everything, citylife, skyscrapers, wonderful beaches, a good train and bus system, the harbour bridge, waterfront living and dining…you name it, Sydney has it. Plus, there is THE opera house. You have seen it a thousand times in pictures, but when you walk towards Sydney harbor and you see it for real, well it is just incredible and you still have the feeling you are seeing it for the first time. You can take a random picture around the harbor and it would probably be suitable for a postcard, the view is just unique…

We where there around Christmas and new year… busy time. well, not for us 🙂 . We didn’t have to do Christmas shopping or buying stuff for a delicious Christmas dinner, we could just wander around the streets of the lovely old and new parts of Sydney, enjoy the summer days and the advantage of travelling?! And even more so, we are enormously thankful to Carol and Bruce who invited us to their home in a lovely Sydney suburb for a delicious christmas lunch ?, and made us really feel at home. Or, well, not really at home like in Switzerland in winter, with snow and cold and short days and all that, but you know what we mean ;-).

The day after Christmas also known as Boxing day is a special day in Sydney. One would rather say a crazy day! No idea if that’s normal around the world, but around here, you see thousands of people filling the shopping streets, waiting in huge lines for their turn to hunt for the best bargains (or thought so bargains) in the first hours of sales. Boxing day is also traditionally the starting day of the Sydney to Hobart Yachting Race, which fills the harbor waters with sailing boats, and the quays with spectators.

 

In the days between Christmas and new year we wandered around different parts of the city, have seen the main city beaches namely Bondi and Manly, and walked the Bondi to Coogee coastal walk. While doing that we met, sometimes by chance and sometimes by arrangement, several friends from Switzerland.

On one day Carol and Bruce took us to the Blue Mountains… more to that in the next post…

NYE – New Year’s Eve – in Sydney is one of the first and most known around the world – you’ll find some more pictures in our previous post here… No need to say more 😉