I've lived in Sydney for 30+ years and I never really did a lot of exploring (yes, shame on me!). So on my holiday back home, I was making it my mission to explore Sydney and NSW as much as possible. I'd been to Palm Beach, Surry Hills, been on a walking tour of Sydney (albeit not for long), camped around NSW and today I went to Newtown to have a good look around. I've been there loads of times before but always for an event or a purpose so I'd never really done much aimless wandering. It was time to change that!
I left my house after peak hour, at about 10am and drove to Enmore. I parked in a spot I knew, both because I knew how to get there and because I knew how to then find my car! From there I walked down Enmore Road and King St. My lovely friend Amy had written out a walking tour of her favourite places in Newtown and I followed that. The first stop was Camperdown Memorial Park and the old church nearby. On the way, I walked past a couple of Fintan Magee murals - they are so great!
I walked through the park to Australia St then down Albemarle, then kind of kept zig-zagging around looking at all the interesting places, particularly the interesting and colourful graffiti, which was everywhere! Loved it.
It was close to lunchtime so time to think about where to eat. Amy had written in her guide about this place called Shenkin Kitchen that served an avocado coated in falafel... ummm yes please! So I walked there, only to find out that I'd left my wallet (with my licence, cards etc) at home. I explained the situation to the guy at the counter and asked if I could use my Google wallet to pay, which I had set up on my phone with my British credit card. Thankfully, it worked and I could have some lunch... But it was not the cheapest lunch, being that I paid for it in pounds with the conversion charge and all that. Oh well! It was worth it though, thoroughly tasty.
After lunch, I spent a couple of hours just looking around, not going anywhere in particular, but enjoying where my feet were taking me.
I left Newtown definitely seeing why people love living it there and it made me really want to go exploring more of Sydney... but alas, I was to fly home in 4 days and never got the chance to! It was really great to see my city through my touristy eyes, I saw things I might not have noticed before, and had a greater appreciation of a few places that I thought I knew!
I left Sydney for London on the 29th September, flying from warm, sunny days to cool ones that were getting shorter and shorter. It was so nice to have had a holiday home though, I'd forgotten how much I missed it, and great adventuring to new places. Thank you everyone who came out to see me while I was there, for making my time at home so enjoyable, and making it so hard to leave. I'll be back soon(ish).