Navigating Sydney on Bus, Train, and Foot

This was my first weekend in Sydney (and last one before classes start... T-10 hours until class numero uno), so I wanted to make sure I made the most of it. And I don't think there is any way this weekend could've been more interesting.

After Friday's Darling Harbour Adventure, my friends and I decided to make a mexican feast in our friend's apartment. On the menu: guacamole (my specialty), peppers and onions, beef, chicken, refried beans, and all the ingredients necessary for make-your-own burritos. We invited a bunch of people to stop by and experience our cooking masterpiece. And let me just say, we are culinary geniuses. It was delicious. After cramming every possible chip into my stomach, a couple friends and I decided to try out a club downtown, Ivy. It's a super classy club, with 4 floors and a really pretty layout. It was a lot of fun and I'll definitely be returning there.

Saturday was the Bondi Beach Music Festival. We spent about an hour mapping out the journey to Bondi, only to completely fail at executing the transportation plan. We figured out that we needed to take 2 different buses, with about 400m of walking in between the bus stops. We get on the first bus, no problem... but that was about all we did right. We got off that bus and asked for directions to the next stop, but were misinformed. After asking multiple people, and being consistently told different directions, a bus driver finally took pity on us and drove us to the right stop for free. So, we got on the next bus, which thankfully said "Bondi" on the front, and laughed off our errors, claiming them as a learning experience. Oh how much more learning we were to encounter. After a while of driving, the bus pulls up to Bondi Junction. Silly Americans that we are, we assumed that Bondi Beach was at Bondi Junction. Wrong. We get off the bus, walk outside of the bus terminal, and see no beach. My friend Kate, who had been directing us up until now, thought that the beach was probably just over the hill and if we walked far enough, we would find it. Thank goodness we decided at this moment to stop following her... because she was very mistaken. I went back inside, look at a map, and see that Bondi Beach is probably a 3 hour walk away (alright I may be exaggerating but it was FAR and in the opposite direction that she wanted to walk). We boarded another bus (bus #4) and finally get to the beach!

Bondi Beach is beautiful! And looks exactly like what you see in the movies. It was definitely worth the long, ridiculous, bus ride(s). We grabbed some lunch (falafel kebab mmm), sat on the beach, and just enjoyed the sun and the sights. Even though it's the middle of "winter" here (65 degree weather = winter? please.), people were still swimming, surfing, and sunbathing. It was what I had imagined when I thought of Australia, and it was great. We ended up not going to the music festival because friends inside said it wasn't worth the $25 entry fee. So we decided to just stay and relax on the beach, which made for a wonderful afternoon. As the sun began to set, we started to make our way back, pretty confident that this time we would get it right. We boarded the correct bus... and ended up getting off too early. Again. So we made our way to Bondi Junction, and as we were trying to find a bus, we met this man, let's call him Jaws, who said it'd be easier for us to take the train. We followed Jaws down to the train station, he told us which tickets to buy, and we all got on the train. We weren't sure we were on the right train, but he claimed to know Sydney like the back of his hand... and, as he said, he had studied his hand a lot. Jaws seemed nice enough so we trusted his information.

The train ride was perhaps the most interesting ride on public transportation I have ever had. Jaws was really hyper. He started off bouncing around the train car, talking excitedly about something I couldn't understand. He had a really... heavy accent? misaligned jaw? I couldn't understand a single thing he was saying. Luckily other people were on the train or else I would've been scared for our lives.

Then, out of nowhere, Jaws said: "I know I talk funny. Last night, a cop broke my jaw with a baton. He just took his baton and went SMASH against my face! He said he was trying to stop me from committing suicide but I wasn't trying to commit suicide! I didn't even have a knife and I wouldn't even know where to start committing suicide!"

... Alrighty. Good to know. Following this lovely chat, he told us to put our hand on his hand because he had a trick. No thank you. After none of us wanted to see the trick, he takes his hand and twists his thumb all the way around. I hope he wasn't planning on doing that to our hands... He then proceeds to try and teach my friend how to whistle with her hands for the rest of the ride. Thankfully, he got off on the stop before ours... or what we thought was ours. He told us to get off at Town Hall. So, we got off at Town Hall, expecting to be close to where we live... and then we see a sign for Darling Harbor, which is a 10 min bus ride from Sydney Uni. Thanks a lot Jaws.

After another 30 mins of wandering around the train station trying to see if there's another train that takes us to Newton (where Sydney Uni is), we decide to just bus it. Finally, at about 7pm, 2.5 hours after we had left Bondi Beach, we got back to Sydney Uni.

I would like to say that I'm now an expert at Sydney public transportation. But I still have no idea.