Travel | Sydney, Australia

My hubby and I recently traveled to Sydney, Australia. We had such a good time! We took flights from Miami, FL to Sydney Australia (with a long layover in Los Angeles). This was my first time that I was going to be on such a long flight so I wanted to break up the 20 hours of flight time.

We were in L.A. for 12 hours so we had plenty of time to explore the city for the day. We rented a car for the day and then stopped and had breakfast at Blu Jame Cafe (one of my favorite places to eat in L.A.), my hubby got a haircut, we caught a movie and did a little shopping. By the end of the day I was ready to sit down somewhere and sleep so I’m sooo glad we broke up the travel time this way.

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To my surprise, the LAX to SYD flight was great. . . It actually wasn’t bad at all. I really thought I was going to go stir crazy being on a flight for 15 hours but I didn’t. It was a late flight (11P departure) so by the time we boarded, got settled, had dinner a watched a few minutes of a movie . . . I passed out.

We arrived around 9A two days later.  The weather was ok. I noticed it’s cooler in the mornings and evenings but warm in the afternoons. The weather and city of Sydney actually reminded me of Los Angeles a lot. We were gone for only a week and since 2 days are lost flying there, we only spent 5 actually nights there. I originally also wanted to fly to Auckland however once I realized it’s a 3–hour flight from SYD to AKL, we decided we didn’t have enough time in Australia to go anywhere else (without rushing from one place to the next). We decided to stay in the Sydney area and explore as much as possible. I friend of mine works for Hilton so I got 50% off Hilton properties but the Hilton property that was available (The Curio by Hilton a.k.a The West Hotel) didn’t offer free parking. I considered Airbnb but the prices for the units that I liked were more than what I was going to pay at The Curio by Hilton. We rented a car because we love having the option of being able to go wherever and whenever we like. My hubby drove the rental car.

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Staying at The Curio by Hilton was great! It’s centrally located in the CBD so it’s walking distance to mostly everything. There were some disadvantages with staying at The Curio by Hilton though. The main one was that the Curio by Hilton doesn’t offer free parking. They charge a flat rate of $38USD a day to park in the garage across the street from the hotel. I feel that is really expensive for parking. We discovered there is also limited street parking (which have many restrictions) at the corner (off Sussex & Slip St). I ended up doing a ton of research before we left the States so I had a few options for parking (which I share in my other post about driving in Australia).

Even though we had the rental car but we didn’t use it everyday. . . . Since the hotel is close to everything we walked, used the rental car, took the train and Uber our our time there. We didn’t have anything planned so we just played it by ear. The only thing my hubby wanted to make sure he did was eat Kangaroo.  . . Which he had it grilled (at a marketplace at “The Rocks” and then as a burger at The Curio by Hilton (which was really good!). I personally didn’t want to eat kangaroo but I was tricked into it. LOL. Our longest drive was when we drove to the Blue Mountains and to Jervis Bay (on different days, of course). The Blue Mountains were ok but Jervis Bay was my favorite place to explore. We saw a tons of wild Kangaroos there and the views while there (on on our way there) were everything!

On our last night in Sydney, we found this cool little Jamaican restaurant/lounge in Newtown called Jamaica House. We noticed there really isn’t a Caribbean community there so we were kinda surprised when we stumbled on it. The jerk chicken burger was sooooo good! The owner and the bartender was really nice and so much fun!

If I get a chance to go back to Australia, I will love to visit Melbourne and some of the smaller cities/towns throughout Australia. I would also love to try to make it to Auckland and possibly Fiji (since everything is right there) as well.

You can get a better glipse of our adventures in Australia by watching the video below.

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Happy Travels!