Sadly now that I’m in Melbourne the Sydney on Sunday concept is out the window although I like to think Sydney Girl in Melbourne is following on the essence of the original concept!

As twenty something girls who often find themselves on the couch on a Saturday wasting the day following a regrettable boozy session on Friday night, we found ourselves looking for a way of redeeming ourselves on Sunday.  Hence we came up with Sydney on Sunday. A concept to fill a few voids in our busy lives:

1. So we can come into work on Monday and tell our colleagues that we did more than nurse a hangover all weekend.

2. So when our friends from Melbourne/USA/UK visited we could actually suggest activities for them outside the obvious bridge climb, opera house etc.

And finally, so we could spend one day a week doing something that, corny as it sounds, cleanses the soul a bit!

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Watsons Bay

It’s an absolutely beautiful day despite the bad reports on the news and it also happens to be the actual birthday of my best friend.  We know we want to do something but like many decisions we girlfriends face, just can’t decide what that happens to be. After a considerable road trip headed in no particular direction, we find ourselves heading East, essentially chasing the sun after seeing some dubious looking clouds over the west. Watson’s Bay is mentioned and we have our destination.

The journey around the headland of Rose Bay and on to Watsons is out of this world. Brief flickers of the city through tree lined streets has us all ‘oooing’ and ‘ahhhing’ up to the lighthouse at The Gap.  Itss fun to see how the other half live and as we come down the hill we see a bunch of people who had the same idea as us. It’s a brief struggle to find a park but venturing a little further away from the shops we easily find one and head up to the notorious Gap lookout.

It’s an unfortunate sight to look over the cliffs and out to the horizon beyond the heads to what should be a marvel, but is now surrounded by “Don’t give up hope” messaging.  Still, thank fully you can turn around and see one of the best views of the city and harbour in Sydney and we snaps photos like the tourists we appear.

On we walk to the wharf and join the dozens of people ordering their seafood at the famous Doyles. We often buy fish and chips from Balmoral Beach on these sorts of days and we’re surprised that the prices here are a lot more reasonable even with the exclusive postcode. After a token celebrity spotting of Jacky O we’re delighted that the fish and chips are not only cheaper but 100 times better, Doyles more than living up to its reputation (if only Watsons Bay was as convenient a place as Balmoral).

We sit in the park under a tree eating and chatting in front of the ridiculous backdrop and I wonder why I ever left this place. A friend happens to be the skipper of a fast ferry to manly so we hop aboard for a quick trip (that is open to anyone for a ticket) and it tops off the best display of Sydney I’ve seen in a while.

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Paddleboarding & Lunch, Bayview 

Fast forward to Sunday 25^th November where our first documented Sydney on Sunday would take place.  It’s a scorching 28 degrees outside and it’s only 10AM so we naturally gravitate to the water. Bayview is a little town on Pittwater Road roughly 40 minutes from the city. The drive is part of the fun of this destination and with a 10KM long windy road down the mountains passing creeks and bushland, you feel like you’re 3 hours north of Sydney. 

Our exact destination is a Paddleboarding site at 1714 Pittwater Road and we manage to park in the carpark alongside the shops which was only $3 per hour and not at all busy for a sunny Sunday.

Paddle boarding to me always looked like one of those activities that super fit, yoga type people do, but I was so pleasantly surprised on a recent trip to Hamilton Island. If you haven’t tried it, do yourself a favour because it’s not only a LOT easier than it looks, but it’s relaxing and the best kind of exercise without feeling like exercise. After doing some research we found a place on Pittwater Road in this quaint boating town that feels a million miles away. Also renting Kayaks and surf skis, the guy that ran the place was lovely and out of his way helpful, even providing a fridge for our 6 pack of beer while we were out on the water!

With paddleboards in hand, he walked us down to the shore and off we went. Paddling only about 500 metres or so up the shore line, we mucked around and swam alongside houseboats and catamarans. While we were on the water we could see groups of surf skiers training with an instructor from the same rental place we found. As well as that they have paddleboard tours which sounded amazing.

The great thing about paddle boarding is that you can lie down and sunbake on your board and just drift or you can have a real work out! We did a bit of both and after about an hour it was hot enough to head back to land.

The lovely guy at the rental place offered us a shower which was great because although the water is beautiful, it’s very salty and a bit muddy on the shore line.  We paid $25 each board for the hour and would definitely go back.

For lunch we found a place next door called the Stowaway which overlooked the wharf. The food was really lovely and just what we were after but we noted that the price was pretty steep considering the portion sizes. Beer battered local flat head with (a very small handful of) chips was $28 but the homemade tartar was worth the money for me! My friend requested the fish grilled (which wasn’t on the menu) and they happily obliged and the service in general was great. Don’t let the beachside kiosk look fool you, I peeked over at other tables meals which included grilled scallops in the shell, gravlax & oysters which looked equally as impressive.

It’s the type of Sunday activity that you ideally need the majority of the day for, we were out from 10:30AM – 3PM including travel time but it was well worth it.

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Art Gallery of NSW & Otto Ristorante, Sydney

Feeling extra cultural on Sunday we decide to venture to Sydney’s Gallery of NSW which lucky for us happens to fall on the Archibald season exhibit.  Parking in the city on a Sunday is metered, long, cheap and surprisingly plentiful so we drive through the otherwise deserted city around noon after a lazy Sunday morning. We park on Elizabeth Street across from David Jones and wander through Hyde Park and around Centennial Park to the Gallery.  The walk alone is a great start and we can’t help stopping to take touristy snaps of St Mary’s Cathedral, Hyde Park and the Archibald Fountain (yes, that’s what that huge fountain in the middle of Hyde Park is called, go figure!).

Art aside, the gallery building itself (above) is stunning and we realize very quickly that there’s a lot of Sydney’s architecture that we’ve just never stopped to appreciate (mental note for another SOS). Given it’s the Archibald exhibit the gallery itself is busy and not exactly the quiet gallery experience we’re expecting. That aside, for a pair of 25 years old it’s an ideal entry level art viewing, given the token celebrity portraits that are hanging.  Still, the more we see, the more we seem to enjoy it and walk out with our personal favorite portraits with no celebs in sight!

After about an hour of feeding our artistic appetites we decide that we’ve earned an equally cultural lunch, Otto at Woolloomooloo.   We manage to make a very last minute booking on the walk down given it’s about 2PM and the lunch rush is over and we’re surprised but excited to be seated right on the water’s edge of the restaurant. Since we’re splurging (by our standards), we take care when ordering and settle on 3 entre type courses, each. To say the food was good is an understatement. I’ve heard many reviews of Otto and understand that we must have ordered very well because it’s rumored to be hit and miss. We start with ravioli of finely sliced picked beetroot with goat’s curd, pistachio and horseradish followed seared scallops & black pudding. We finish with a three cheese soufflé which is so

rich, it could have been our only course and we would have left satisfied! Not only was the food amazing but we loved just sitting and watching, whether the people on the tables around us or the extreme wealth of the boats on the harbor.

The combination of the gallery and the relatively lavish lunch was a really nice thing to do on not such a nice day (it rained on and off for a lot of the day). We managed to stretch out our lunch and left around 4PM but the day could be as quick or long as you want it.

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Hop On Hop Off Bus Tour

This Sunday was the epitome of being a tourist in your own town. Forget touring around NYC or London on their red line buses, we hopped on one in our own backyard! It’s interesting when you’re in foreign cities, you’re so aware of all the touristy activities on every corner. Although somehow in Sydney you go through your day oblivious to all that. Enter our hop on hop off bus tour through the streets of Sydney!

This is the best kept secret to fill your Sunday and is surprisingly fun!

We figure we’d make it a full on tourist experience so catch a ferry into circular quay which is beautiful. After purchasing our hop on hop off ticket at a seller at the wharf we manage to hop on a bus and off we go.

I challenge anyone hop on this bus and NOT learn something. I don’t pretend that I’m some expert about the history or architecture of Sydney, but I was frankly ashamed of how little I knew. I think I did more “Ahhhh’s” that the genuine tourists on the bus! Yes, we’ve all seem the opera house and harbour bridge but it’s when you pass … and learn … that you really start listening and nodding with understanding.

At the same time, it was a source of humour for the day when chatting with people on the bus! The inevitable question asked from fellow bus passengers, “where are you from” turned into a game of accents and backstories. If role playing isn’t your thing, people also loved to hear that we were from Sydney and we enjoyed proudly telling them all about our city.

Darling Harbour is of course the obvious choice for lunch on a tourist inspired day so we headed to … for lunch

I wish I could go on and on about what we saw when we ‘hopped’ off but in fact we tried not to. In the end we decided a lot of the things we were hopping off to see and do could actually be done on another day and become their very own story for Sydney on Sunday.