On Christmas Morning, we woke up to 80 degree weather. A bit out of the ordinary for December. That morning didn’t feel very christmassy. And neither did that whole week leading up to Christmas. But, we still had an amazing day. The first item on the itinerary was breakfast! Our Hostel was hosting free champagne and pastries in the “Side Bar” beneath our hostel. So while Skandy and Reilly were busy getting ready for the day at the beach, I tried my best to arrive right at 9:00am, when the breakfast started, because I knew free food and drinks would go quick. The line for the champagne was quite long, so I skipped out on that and opted instead for a few blueberry muffins and some cherry puff pastries. Yummy! They were also giving out cool little free Christmas hats. I grabbed a few of these so we would have some for Bondi Beach.
After breakfast, we headed out for the beach. We had to transfer from bus to bus, and at one of the bus stops, we saw these giant bullet sculptures. Reilly decided to do an “American Pose” for the pictures with the bullets. Very classy, Reilly.
After roughly a 40 minute bus ride, we arrived at Bondi Beach! We were grateful for the weather. In days prior it had said that rain was likely but there was hardly a cloud in the sky. Bondi Beach was beautiful. There was a section for swimmers and a section for surfers. Practically everyone was wearing either red trunks or a red bikini, and most beach goers had on the same little Santa hats we were wearing. With the sun being out, we realized we probably should have brought sunglasses and that we definitely needed to get some sunscreen. So, we headed to a nearby EzMart to grab some sun screen and each get a pair of semi-silly sunglasses. Here are some pics of us at the beach with our fresh shades.
After about an hour at the beach, we headed out on the famous Bondi to Coogee walk. The walk started on the southern point of Bondi beach where there was a giant bar with a pool overlooking the ocean called Icebergs. Icebergs was actually closed on Christmas so I’ve included a picture from another day trip we took to Bondi. But, this is what it looked like, minus the people.
The walk was around 3-4 hours and worked all the way down the Sydney Coast. On our way to Coogee, we took several pictures from the cliffs that lined the coast line. Lots of very blue water. Here are some of my favorite pics.
I thought this one was especially cool with the ant hill looking lines formed into the rocks. And here are a few of me getting a little risky on the edge of this cliff.
We passed a few different beaches and stopped to swim in a few. One of our favorites was called Tamarama Point, a little inlet between the rocks where people were swimming and surfing, and dogs were playing in the sand.
After a while, we came upon Bronte Beach. We saw it from afar and it looked like there was some kind of event going on because there were so many people who seemed to be on the beach and in the grass behind it. As you can see from the pictures, this was one of the most crowded public events I’d ever seen and definitely the most crowded beach I’d ever been to.
We spent a little while here at Bronte, enjoying the company. You might think it would have been made up entirely of Australians, but 80% of the people we met were British. Based on our Hostel experience in Sydney, a lot of English people seem to come to Australia for Christmas and NYE. One of the guys from England who was staying in Skandy and Reilly’s room even said “Come to Sydney to meet English people and go to London to meet Aussies.” After our time at Bronte, we continued down towards Coogee. We took some more pics of the beach and the beautiful rock formations.
Closer to Coogee, we found a little lookout spot and took a second to catch our breath. And just beyond the lookout spot, we came across a huge cemetery with hundreds of tomb stones.
Right after the cemetery, there was another little beach inlet with some houses overlooking the water. There was also an ice cream truck where we each got a cone. It was good, but a little different than what I was expecting. It tasted very airy. At this point, we were pretty pooped out. We headed back home on the bus, showered, grabbed a kebab from the doner kebab place down the street, and hit the hay. A very Merry Christmas indeed! 🙂
Nick Henderson
1:37pm
Sydney, Australia