Yeah.
It's really cool! Sydney is super duper fun to try to navigate, as a city built by drunk convicts with no clue about city planning or architecture (this is real my tour guide told me so) with way more hills and valleys and beaches than Melbourne, walking around the city is such a treat, there's so many little alleyways and arcades and stairways that all lead to god- knows-where, usually awfully laid-out roads and little shopping streets. It's SO MUCH MORE FUN THAN MELBOURNE, like Melbourne is WAY more driveable and navigable, but I think that gives Sydney way more charm, it being just like a maze-city with paths going up, down, and all around.
Some other sick things about the city are the BEACHES. Once again, WAY BETTER BEACHES THAN MELBOURNE. To be fair to Melbourne, the beach sunsets here in Sydney are not at all as good (they basically don't exist), but the beaches themselves are sooooo much better... There was one day where I went to this super cool little spot on Manly Beach (very good name!) called The Manly Wormhole, which was cool enough by itself, but I managed to climb around on the cliffside near some fishermen and go all the way to Freshwater Beach to the north, and it was so fun and pretty! Agh! Sydney's beaches kick ass! Here are some photos I took below!
There's also some hilarious friggin animals. The first day I arrived, I took a tour, and saw the most sad/hilarious looking bird, called "bin chickens" by locals according to my guide.
Despite totally being able to fly, they just like to walk around and eat garbage. I feel like they wouldn't be the most elegant animals in the first place, but seeing them weathered and ragged around the city hurts to see a little bit. They look so goofy, and seeing them in the wild they're hilarious, but in the city, yeahhhhh, they're a little depressing.
I also saw some cutie little lizards on the coast in south Sydney, they'd get scared super easily and then run under the bushes. I did get a couple good pictures though, shown below! I also saw some fatass SKINKS on the same trail I saw the lizards on, pics also below. I loved the big old skinks, they were so frickin chill. Literally, they'd let me get right next to them before they'd slowly get out of the way. Loved those dudes :)
ALSO I SAW THE HUGE ASS FLYING FOXES FINALLY OMG LITERALLY IT WAS THE BEST. So some quick backstory, I literally spent a whole day in Melbourne trying to find these bastards, walked for HOURS trying to find their habitat and found NOTHING. I went home absolutely heartbroken, thinking I would never again have the chance to see their goofy faces in broad daylight. Lo and behold, in Sydney I decide to take a trip to a place called Lachlan Swamp for obvious reasons (they didn't have a sign or you KNOW I'd have pictures), and THERE THEY ARE, JUST A MASSIVE COLONY OF BATS. It was lovely, they were noisy as all hell, and I would recommend anyone in the area to please go check them out because they're very cool animals :) here are some pics.
For shopping, Sydney had some pretty neat stuff to keep me entertained. There were a bunch of thrift stores (which I have learned are called "Op Shops") all over the city which is pretty nice. There was also the requesite nerd stuff, like game stores, comic book stores, book shops, etc, which are all fun to look through. Surprisingly not as many local mom and pop shops for these things, most of them were bigger chains, at least within the CBD area, which was kinda lame. The suburb I stayed it didn't have anything like these which was no fun :( I kinda missed that more local feel Melbourne had, with more local artist shops and independent stores. BUT! There is a kind of parallel to the Queen Victoria Market with Paddy's Markets Haymarket, only way more depressing with an indoor setting and no one around the souvenir shops, but with similar produce quality and prices.
Some other fun Sydney things I did! I found a couple cockroaches (maybe the same one?) in my first hostel, yuck. I met some other Canadians from Saskatoon! We went to the club one night and talked about home, it was good time. I went for a bunch of cool oceanside walks, one of which I saw all the skinks on. I made a cool friend who was from Melbourne and just visiting Sydney for university stuff, we did a bunch of touristy stuff the first day I was there like a guided tour and seeing the Opera house and crossing the big Coathanger bridge, it was fun and he was epic :)
AH! I also saw Sparks! They were such a fun show, I'm really glad my sibling mentioned they were playing in Australia. Got to see them at the Opera House too, which was SUPER cool, I didn't get to see much of it from the inside, but it was super clean and the acoustics were great and man it just FELT cool, thank you Sparks and the city of Sydney.
I think that's all I want to say about Sydney for now though? It's super cool, and I'm honestly genuinely thinking about making it the place where I stay and work for a couple months. It's pretty darn neat!
Alright anyways it's time for the final
LACHLAN'S HOSTEL REVIEWS
for Melbourne at least. This one is for Barkly Backpackers, located in beautiful St. Kilda, Melbourne. I'm gonna keep this one brief because this update is already long as as crap and I am TIRED of writing. Okay!BUILDING:
The building! It was really good! Everything was clean, the layout was nice (except this one low area where my head touched the roof LMAO), with minimal stairs, no shitty elevators, and only one outside area that didn't get covered in rain! Great kitchen with TONS OF FREE SPICES, NICE. Location was also great, only a 10 minute walk from the beach and all major grocery stores, epic, 9/10.
AMENITIES:
These were also very good! The common area was bright, and small enough and quiet enough to have conversations with people! I made so many acquaintances! There was a TV that worked, and we had a movie night where we watched 127 hours and we all got to be squeamish together! So fun. So good. And the bathrooms! Fresh hand towels that were changed daily! Showers with a decent water pressure and tempurature! And, check this out: SHELVES FOR YOU TO PUT YOUR CLOTHES AND BATHROOM GEAR ON WHILE YOU CHANGE AND GET READY! It was... so excellent... It wasn't the best of course, it was still a hostel, but holy shit, the people who ran the hostel actually CARED, it was so nice. 7/10, not amazing of course but holy shit it's so much better than every other hostel I've been at, amazing.
PEOPLE:
The people were really nice. Everyone was like a little family, and if you were nice to them, they were super nice to you. Thank you Moritz from Germany for being epic. 8/10.
And that's all I really want to say about Barkly Backpackers for now, I may update this page with more later, but for now Barkly's getting an 8/10, it's super good and I can't recommend it enough if you're ever in Melbourne. It's also the cheapest one I stayed at, so haha there you go! Very good!
Okay yup that's it for real this time, I am DONE typing, please have a lovely day/evening/morning, Anna Milla I know you're reading this so shoutout to YOU specifically, hope you're doing alright, I saw a sign for a restaurant called "Annita" recently and I thought of you :)
Okay bye bye for real everyone! Seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeya!