Few days in Sydney: KOI dessert bar, coastal walk, walking tour, swimming and "inte gå" ;)

Since our flight from NZ to Indonesia was through Sydney, we asked Kilroy Travels whether if we could stay few nights there and it worked out fine. That was nice since Edda had never been there before and Markus' last visit was a long time ago. We didn't have any expectations for Sydney - we just wanted to walk around and we looked forward to seeing Edda's friends, Anki and Jocke and their son Theo. 😄 

 Teaser for this post 😀

When we first arrived we went to Judith's place - the Dutch girl we met in NZ. She is staying in Sydney for a while and we decided to walk around the city together. And we got to put our luggage in her room for the day which was great! Judith showed us where to buy a metro/bus/ferry card and showed us a bit of the city center. 

Here you can see the Sydney Tower Eye. We never went up, but maybe next time. We hear they even do yoga up there! 

Sydney harbor bridge 

Sydney opera house by day 

It was a nice day and we felt like having a glass of sparkling wine, so we stopped at a café and did just that. We felt like being on vacation when sitting there with a nice glass of sparkling wine. We explored the map of Sydney and thought we would be very cultural and went to the Museum of Contemporary Art across the street. It was free, which was great. Well, after seeing the exhibitions, we wouldn't maybe have wanted to pay much either...

Here are some pictures from the exhibitions. In the first one - the clock - we noticed that number 4 was wrong again, just like in Valparaíso. We don't know why.

The next day we decided to take a free walking tour. There were a lot of people in our group but luckily the guide had a loud voice so we could hear him all the time. He told that he started their walking tour company with his friend while he was studying architecture and we did notice that on the tour - it was very much about the buildings and their history. The tour was OK, but we did prefer the one in Valparaíso. But we did learn for example that the area around Sydney Town Hall used to smell really bad because there were many bodies buried under the ground but not deep enough! At some point the city dug all up so they wouldn't smell there anymore but even after that, apparently, some bodies have been found years later.

 Here again - number 4 is wrong. Edda asked our tour guide why that was and he had never paid attention to the clock even though he speaks about the building every day. 😁

This wild boar is there to collect money to a hospital. It is said that if one gives money to him and rubs his nose, one will be lucky. We did notice that people have not only rubbed his nose... 

This dog has been collecting money for blind and deaf childer

This art work (many birdcages and bird sounds) was put on the street because Sydney wanted to be more like Melbourne (more artsy). People liked it that much that it got to stay there. 

One thing Edda had waited for a very long time was dinner at KOI. KOI is a dessert bar established by a Masterchef Australia contestant, Reynold. Edda had watched his journey on MC and was really impressed by his desserts. We had made our table reservation well in advance to be sure we didn't miss this opportunity. Expectations were high. Well, our expectations were not met. 😒 The place looks quite nice. You can just sit and relax outside while enjoying a dessert or two or then you can go upstairs for a dinner. They have two options - a 4 course dessert menu or a 7 course dinner menu. We expected the savory dishes to be on point as well, so we took the dinner menu. Don't do that. All three savory dishes for both of us were lacking imagination, taste and they were just sad. Also, they don't serve wine, which was really weird. They said that their application is still in, but that's a bit weird since the restaurant has been open for over a year. Well, donno. Anyhow - so the beginning of the experience was a total miss. We also somehow wished that they would've acknowledged that "we were the people from Finland that made the reservation 5 months ago and are on their honeymoon and are really excited to experience KOI", but no. The staff is mainly work-and-travellers which means that they usually don't really care about stuff like that.

 We ordered some fruity non-alcoholic drinks, that were actually quite beautiful and tasty (when you peeled the burned part off)

But yes - then came the desserts. And they were as we expected! Delicious, beautiful and with a lot of imagination. So, if you go to KOI, order only desserts - there is no use in paying for their savory dishes.

Reynold's signature dish - "The Moss"

The day after we decided to do a coastal walk from Coogee beach to Bondi beach (the link explains it the other way around). It was around 6 - 6,5 km and easy terrain. It was a beautiful day and there were a lot of people out there. But it didn't really bother us, because there were so many spots where you could go and enjoy the views that you could often be by yourself there.

At one point we had to take a detour because a storm had ruined a part of the coastal road. We walked through a gigantic cemetery and it was something we have never seen before. A) it was huge and B) usually you have to go inside of a cemetery to walk there, this one was just on the way on both sides of the main walk path. 

Edda had searched for a few things to do in Sydney and one thing that came up was swimming at Icebergs. It is a big pool made of sea water right next to the ocean. It looks cool, doesn't it? The fun part was that every now and then you would get a surprise from the ocean while swimming or just relaxing on the edge, as you can see in the second picture below. 😂 But we were not allowed to throw water on the stones in their sauna, which was disappointing. 😕 

 Sitting at the pool and almost got wiped out by the wave 😂

In the evening Anki showed us where we could see both the bridge and the opera house by night. As you saw from the first picture in this post, it really was a great place to stand at! Here is one more photo of Sydney by night. Some great photos Markus has learned to take with his camera!

On our last day Markus was a bit sick so we didn't take a ferry to Manly beach as we had planned. Well, we did go to Billi's café with Anki and they had a very nice breakfast/lunch menu. We could've eaten everything from the list but ended up with the meals in pictures below. They also had delicious fresh juices with ginger, which was nice.

As we mentioned early in this post, we stayed at Anki's and Jocke's place in Sydney. It was so great to see them again and hear how their life is in Sydney. Also, it was our first time meeting their son, Theo, who is a really cool kid! He became friends with us quite quickly and was so glad when he noticed that we are not scary people and enjoyed playing with him. Every time he went to a nap or bed, he said to us "inte gå", which is "not go" in Swedish. It was heart-warming and then again heart-breaking when we then did have to go. But we think he will survive 😉