Sydney: Day 2

I slept GREAT that first night in the pitiful hostel! I woke up at 6:30 and went for a run through Hyde park (where the Mormans were yesterday). The weather is not typical Sydney weather, and the forecast isn't looking good for the next week. It's not quite raining, but it's very overcast and windy. That isn't necessarily a bad thing though when your hostel as no AC and you're walking around all day.

So after my run I went to an internet cafe further in Kings Cross, and even at 9 in the morning I could tell how scary and dirty that area is. Technically, my hostel is in Kings Cross which is why some people were worried about me staying there, but I am far enough east that it's really not scary at all. Its probably a fine area, and safe as long as you avoid the alleys at 3am, but if you walk down Darlinghurst St. all you see are pretty much sex shops and adult stores. It's the red light district and all of the tour books I've read refer to the area as "Bohemian" but it should just say "kind of trashy".

After that I took a long walk down to Darling Harbor and I was there early enough to avoid a big crowd of people, so it was really peaceful. It's kind of touristy with some souvenir shops and a huge ferris wheel, but I really liked it. It was clean and pretty and pleasant.

I ate at a little cafe by the park and then walked on through to Chinatown. It was just what you would expect Chinatown to look like, only there is a little covered extension of it called Paddy's Market. I found a few cute t-shirts and gifts in there. The first picture below is Chinatown and the second is Paddy's Market.

I left Paddy's Market and walked back through Darling Harbor on my way to the aquarium, but the line was ridiculously long at that time. I'm glad I didn't go then anyway, because later on this night I met a girl who gave me a free pass for 3 months! Sweeeet!

I wandered across Pyrmont Bridge (below) and had a glass of wine on the other side at a nice little corner bar called Oscar's, then headed back to my hostel to shower and get ready to meet up with my 2 Canadian friends that I met in the Sydney airport: Katie and Gracie.

I got to Katie and Gracie's hostel (which by the way is so ridiculously nice compared to mine) at 8:30pm and met one of their roommates named Abby who is from Arizona. She's the one who gave me the aquarium pass. After about 5 minutes of hanging out with the Canadians I was already being harassed about my "ya'll"s. And they taught me, "CHABOY!!!" but I have no idea what it means. Anyway, we all headed out and grabbed a piece of pizza then went on to explore Sydney's nightlife. The first bar we went to was fun and had a really good 3 man band playing covers of Radiohead and Weezer. Abby left after the fist bar. She is the one on the far left in the pic below (which was at the first bar called Side Bar). I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but Abby wasn't a huge partier.

The second bar which was highly recommended by a local Sydneysider was called Cheers. It was awful. There was good music but there were about 5 other people in the bar and no other girls.

The last place we went to was called The Gaff. We taxied to it and it was closer to my side of town so I was happy about that. The Gaff was AWESOME! They played 80's music all night and it was packed. I ended up seeing a guy that was staying in my hostel (I recognized him because he'd been wearing the same red shirt for 2 days) and he and his roommate walked back with me at the end of the night, which was really nice. It was a good day and-besides my fall on the wet pavement on the way home-a great night!