3 Days in Sydney on a Budget

Oh hi! We're back in Sydney, Australia, one of our favorite cities of all time. You know the drill by now, we have three days, $100 per day budget for the two of us. So if we're in Australia and it's upside down, figure that out future Lisa. I think this might be one of our hardest budget challenges so far, but I think we're gonna be able to get up to some good fun. Here we go! Normal getting into Australia things right? Like we had to use the Australian ETA app to sign up for that visa thing that cost $20 and that got approved basically instantaneously through the app. Then right after that we booked a mega budget flight on a mega budget airline. 11 hours on Jetstar is an experience. Made it through immigration, bought our Aerolo eSIMs, we'd have data while we were here, and usually at this point we'd get cash and we'd pick up a transit card, but you don't need either of those here because credit cards are accepted everywhere including literally on all of the trains and ferries and buses and everything else. So then we just grabbed a train, made it to downtown, dropped off our bags at our hotel, and then just walked down here. I mean I'm literally looking at the Sydney Opera House, the Harbour Bridge right behind us. We're gonna explore the circular quay area and then probably go get some food. It's so nice to be back in Sydney. I remember in high school seeing pictures of the Sydney Opera House and thinking I would never be able to come because it was so far away and now we get to be here and it's so incredibly beautiful. So from the moment we've landed I've been absolutely fiending for an Aussie meat pie and somebody told us about this place just on the other side of the Botanic Garden called Harry's Café des Wheels. What I hear is quite like an iconic place here. I'm really excited to give it a try. Everything about this place looks so good and the vibe is amazing. A curry beef and then with chips and a drink. This looks so good. So good. Oh is this curry on it? Man just look at this. We got hot chips as they call them here. Gravy on top. Top tier. Top tier. I would say even top 10. I'm so hungry. The sun is shining. There are pigeons right above us and this place is just like a pull-up and sit at the bar kind of style of eatery. I love this place and this food is really really good. It's a little bit pricier than we're used to but actually when you convert it back to USD like we paid $14.20 for like $10. Pretty good for a breakfast for two that's quite heavy and filling and full of gravy. Flaky buttery crust. Nice and crunchy. Insides are so spicy and so good. Look at the view that you get at this restaurant. Rocks which is kind of on the west side of where the Sydney harbour is on the other side of that harbour and we're heading up here to make it to the stairs that leads up to the bridge which then you can walk across the bridge from there. So it's just like a mile walk from end to end to get from this side of the bridge to the other. Supposedly it's very beautiful. I've never done it before so this will be a first. Can't wait. That large cruise ship. Wow. The city is incredibly beautiful. Meet some people up there and apparently you can climb to the top of harbour bridge like actually climb up the peak of the bridge which is wild and terrifying but that sounds super cool. It's completely out of our budget. Maybe someday. Okay so when we first came to Melbourne and went to go see an AFL game over there and we had such a blast and we saw the Sydney Swans, the women's team, were playing right here on the first day that we got here we of course had to buy tickets. We're gonna go hop into this game right now. There's so much like excitement. There's so many people wearing like red and white and they gave us this cool sign and stuff. I just I can't wait. I can't wait. Whoa this is awesome. What'd you get? Perfie spooner. This is so cool. I've never been to a professional game where you can actually stand at the fences like on the sidelines. People are just walking around carrying their beers in the stands too and I don't pretend to completely remember the rules of AFL but these women are awesome and incredibly athletic. This is such a cool game. The entire experience is just so cool. The stadium and all these things named like the Duncan Thompson stand and the Molly Dive stand and all these parts of it that obviously have a big history and it just feels like you're just kind of brought into it. We're having a super fun time here. The beers are pretty cheap too. I love this. That was super fun. Okay I think we're gonna grab the next ferry back to the other side. What an awesome time. Okay so according to some people who are walking out so fact check us if this is correct but I think we just watched the women's Sydney Swans first ever win. This is only their second year competing at all but still that's really cool that we got to see that. That was that was so fun. All right ferry's just a little bit of a walk down the road. We'll grab that. Should be a beautiful time to take the ferry right under the bridge I think. super cool. We're staying at the Occidental Hotel. Cool. Look at all these beds we got. People were like you're not gonna have enough beds. I'm like man we got all the beds. Room tour. This place was $52 a night. Let me show you all the cool things that we got. This sink. One, two, three. Beds. This microwave. Water kettle. This closet. That's pretty much it. A lot for $52 a night right? And we're in the heart of Sydney. now it is time to find the Merrickville pork roll. The banh mi sandwich and I think it is down this kind of weird alleyway here. I'm not 100% sure but I'm very excited for this and I'm super hungry. Traditional parsley. Would you like fresh chili? Oh this looks so good. Don't drop it, don't drop it, don't drop it. Oh my goodness. This thing is huge. It's quite affordable. It's 9 AUD which works out to be like five US dollars for this giant thing. So I think we're gonna split it. Here we go. Oh that's fluffy and crunchy. It's so good. So fresh. The pate which is my favorite part of a banh mi is so so savory, so good. Why are we always eating street food in like dark alleys and stuff? I'm not sure if I've ever done anything more shameful in my life than this. Maybe, maybe not. Eating an entire cheesecake in a back alleyway. Oh I don't know if we're gonna eat the whole thing right now. Oh yeah. That was a fun walkabout. So we really wanted to get something very Sydney specific. So we figured what could be more Sydney than getting fish and chips from a kebab shop. This is exactly what we got. This stuff looks really good. There's just sauce freaking everywhere. She asked me if I wanted chicken salt on the fries and I literally said yeah and then she left. Can you just say like, don't worry about the terrible lighting. Grilled slash breaded fried fish and it's in this sweet and sour but also garlicky sauce. It's really good. Fries are good. Anyway, we did a lot today. It's pretty dark so I think we're gonna finish this up and head home. Tomorrow, another big day. I think I could have one of those pies every single day. The more nature-y side of Sydney. So we've heard that this Spit Bridge to Manly walk is supposed to be one of the most iconically Sydney walks. So that's what we're doing today. We just crossed that bridge. We took a bus here from the Central Business District, walked across and now begins our 10 kilometer walk all the way to Manly. I can't wait to see what Sydney's coast looks like from here. You have such good posture. You're always looking up. So we're like halfway through this hike right now and so far I'm just blown away and I totally understand now why this is one of the most popular hikes to do anywhere in Sydney. We just heard about this from our friends yesterday and then just got on the bus, showed up here and so far all of this trail has been so well maintained. So clean, stunning views every like two minutes that you go around every corner. I totally get it now. I think one of my favorite parts about this entire walk is how different each of the landscapes are as we continue on the path and now we've like reached this like forest of trees that don't really, I think they're eucalyptus. I don't know if anyone knows. They're like smooth kind of like clay looking and it smells incredible. I just, I love how diverse Australia and Sydney is. You would never know in the city. Bye chicken. Turkey? That's the bridge in the skyline. Look at that. Okay so I think we're almost there. We just got to make it around this corner and then you know see it over there. It's a fun little detour I think. I'm glad it's low tide because we're super close to Manly. We just had this last little shoot. We just got to Manly and it is so nice here. It's very chill and laid back. I just stopped at the gallery art museum and it's free. There's so much cool things happening like there's people playing volleyball, there's people fishing. It's just got a laid back atmosphere. Oh what a beautiful hike and just a perfect end to it. So we're at Four Pines right now. We're here during happy hour. They have it every day between five and seven I think. The queues are great. They're like 4.50 each. That was a pretty long walk. It probably took like three four hours. In fact it's almost sunset now. It definitely was much longer than we thought but in a very good way and I think for now we're just going to grab some fish and chips, watch the sunset and then take the ferry back into the city. Okay I'm gonna go get fish and chips. You go get some good sunset footage. See you later. I'll be there in a minute. Thank you. Oh yes yes. They took it literally huh? One fish. One fish, many chips. Yeah one fish, many chips. Oh wow. Better than yesterday? It's different because it's breaded and fried and it's so so crispy. I missed the garlic sauce from the last place but this is really good. This is really good. How's the view? And we're at the beach so you know. that definitely came up right was one of those private harbour cruises. So they were like $120 maybe $200 a person depending on how long and what you got. But after doing this for just like five dollars, it's just such a good deal and you get such an incredible view. Definitely don't take the fast ferry either, like the slow ferry. That was just, that was just incredible. That was such an awesome incredible ride. I think since we're so close to Darling Harbour we're just gonna walk around, see Sydney at night. It's so pretty, it's so pretty. And then maybe second dinner. Okay so now we're in Darling Harbour which seems like the after work hangout for the people that work at the banks or the other various firms in the area seems real shmancy in a lot of ways. Not exactly our scene but it's just really nice to walk here at night right. It's just really peaceful, there's not a lot of people, it just feels very very chill, very relaxed. These are a few of my favourite things. So there's a lot of things to love about Sydney, obviously right. One of my favourite things though is just the availability and variety of food options. There's so many cool food options. In fact we're in like a tiny alleyway right up on George Street, one of the main streets in Sydney. This place is called Laneway Dumplings and it's just perfect in every way like for what we like right. The food probably going to be delicious. We're on plastic chairs, we're on this extremely rickety table that our camera is on right now that moves back and forth and just everything about this is exactly what I love out of a restaurant but to have it here in Sydney as an option right next to some of the fanciest restaurants in town, I love it. Those are good. You can tell the skin is like fresh made, it's not the store-bought wrapping, it's like thick actual dumpling wrapping. The spice is nice, sweet and actually not what I was expecting but it's good. I've always looked at the Taronga Zoo and heard how cool it is but then I look at the price and I just can't afford it. But since we've been eating meat pies for breakfast every single morning from the grocery store as well as generally saving money on almost every other aspect of this trip, I think we have enough to be able to make this work within our $100 per day budget which is very exciting. I finally get to do it. That ferry ride was incredible. This zoo is so pretty right off the bat. There's like jungly, nature-y sounds and birds, chickens, turkeys, whatever they are running around. It's fun in here already. I don't know if they're turkeys or chickens but there's some kind of birds that make a lot of riffraff. We paid $25 per person, $25 US dollars per person, by booking these tickets online through Agoda as it turns out. I'm excited, let's go explore. It's huge! I've only seen like videos of them and I thought they were like this big but they're like dogs. Let's go into kangaroo country. That's an ostrich. It's ginormous. What? Wait. I don't know, like it feels like we're too close but I don't... Are we allowed to be that close? Oh it's an emu, it's an emu. But still, look how big it is. I mean, what? It's a dinosaur. Don't be all shifty, just walk past them. It's just coming through. Sorry, sorry. Did he even see us? Yeah, he gave me some serious side eye. You'll see it back in the instant replay. Sorry. Big big day. I hope to be as chill as you someday. Did you see that? What are you so scared of? Falling by really quickly and really low. One just like brushed up against my ear. Every now and then you look up and you see the incredible view. This might be the most beautiful view from a zoo. This view is so wild, like a giraffe in front of the Sydney skyline. The two I just never would have pictured together. They're incredibly beautiful animals. It's just such an interesting backdrop. It's so beautiful. Trippy, it's trippy. That was super cool. I mean, obviously this is a beautiful zoo, right? Like we're just heading back down to the ferry the same way that we came in and then I think we're going to check out Chinatown because we're hungry, which motivates almost all of our actions. As you'll notice in this video, almost every single transition is I'm hungry, therefore we're going of the MCA or the Museum of Contemporary Art. This is why we came. The view is incredible and this cafe is really, really nice and chill. Everyone's in a good mood taking pictures and we're sitting on top of one of the most awesome free art galleries in all of Sydney. I love this Cream Puffs where you can get seven cream puffs for four dollars. We only need two, right? Two. We're gonna get like 10 times the compromise at seven. Thank you. Oh, they're so squishy and so warm. Wow, that was hot. It was like nuclear. Definitely wait a minute after you buy them to eat them. I know the sign literally said it up there to wait but I just couldn't. It was just it's just too good. It's like a vanilla custard cream on the inside with this really soft, very sweet outer shell that's like fried just perfectly so it's like it exists. It's the perfect holder for the stuff inside of it and as soon as you put it in your mouth it just disintegrates into this like lava of vanilla sugar deliciousness. So good. Okay, so right about this time in the video you might be wondering like what are we doing here? Like why are we sitting on this dirty park bench eating the literal cheapest dessert in all of Sydney? Why are we trying to hit a hundred dollar per day budget? Why are we doing all this? And that's a really good question. I would say first of all because these things are absolutely delicious and super worth the money but second and I think most importantly is that we want you to stop watching us. I mean not right now like not immediately but eventually we want you to stop watching us because you've seen enough of the world that's gotten you super excited to go or you feel like you can travel on a reasonable real human budget and after watching enough of these you kind of make that decision of like hey I should just go on a big adventure on my own and that's exactly what we want to have happen and we're hoping that by showing this style of travel that's very realistic like travel in the real way that real people do it. No like crazy twenty thousand dollar airplane seats or like gajillion dollar private train rides or whatever. I mean you know what I'm talking about you've seen this stuff on YouTube. You're just out there traveling the world having an amazing time that's what we want to have happen. Okay that's enough of me on my soapbox let's let's roll. What do you think? Oh it's actually pretty good. It's Taiwanese food. We're at this Taiwanese restaurant called Mother Chews and actually our good friends the Finnies told us about this and I'm really excited because the menu looks legit Taiwanese food and everything looks so good it smells really good in here. I think we're gonna get some green onion pancake and one other thing probably. This looks really good. I'm impressed. She called it lu rou pan. Yeah she did. This is oh my gosh so saucy. This is the braised pork with like sauce on rice. I think we eat this every day in Taipei. This is so so tasty. I'm gonna cry actually. This is amazing like I feel like this is like this is legit real Taiwanese food. It's so good. It's so good. You didn't want any right? This is one of my favorite foods. Okay so we're just walking off our food a little bit. We're in Patty's Market right now and this is definitely the best place I think in the city to find some of the more esoteric things. For example these hats and also these hats and these kind of cool socks. Oh sunglasses. Do I look intellectual? We still haven't found the exact perfect sunglasses yet but wow look at all this like touristy uh gifty goods galore here. There's also a whole fresh food market attached to this just right over there so you can kind of come here to get anything you're and I think they'd take the anything here very literally. I'm gonna grab some quick snacks from the grocery store if it's sunset and find a good chair to sit in. Oh yeah this looks great. I love it. What do you think about cold apple pie? Do you think you gotta heat this up? And I love those like end of day grocery store specials that you can get here especially at Kohl's. They'll normally have them in like one refrigerator all the way in the back corner of the store but you'll get stuff for like 80 or 90 percent off and that's how we've gotten all of our breakfast so far. There's the sunset kind of and there's the opera house. We got our little chicken goujons which are literally just uh chicken fingers and uh what else did we get from the um from the discount bin? We got these bad boys and a totally uncooked apple pie. God The chicken goujon madame. Why thank you. Pretty good. Our last day here in Sydney. Yeah. I don't know overall pretty great trip. Yeah yeah I think three days here was just right for one trip but I feel like there's a lot more that I want to see. Definitely. You know like I think I'd want to come back but a hundred dollars per day surprisingly just about right. I think we may even have a little bit of money left over or we just we're right on there right on there. You will be able to tell us first by looking at the screen. Yeah and I was really pleasantly surprised I would say one by our hotel. It's not you know it's not amazing. You're not going to come into and be like oh. Location was perfect. Location was absolutely perfect. Price. It was great value. Yeah. Things that I am so glad that we did and I would continue to do. Take the ferries. They're incredibly great ways to see the city. They're super affordable. The AFL game. Oh that was incredible. That especially at that stadium. That stadium just felt like it had so much history. Yeah. At it and with all the stands having the cool names that each of them did and like the whole vibe of that place just felt right. Our trip to Manly and that hike to it was just stunning the entire day. We got that recommendation from our friends the Finneys and that was my favorite day I think. I think that that's kind of like an analogy for what's so great about Sydney is there's just so many different sides to it. So many different great things about it like you can go 15 minutes out and you're like kind of out in the middle of nature and you can walk that beautiful hike all the way out to this tiny little beach town that had that has somehow public transport connecting all of it together that's affordable. What I was really surprised about was just the availability of affordable food. I mean outside of Chicken there was actually a lot more like affordable budget food. Maybe in the future we would budget a little bit more for experiencing other kinds of foods because there is a ton of really good food here. Yeah because I mean even in just the few times that we went out I think we ate like six different countries cuisines. Yeah it's pretty incredible. We were out just kind of on accident and then also the meat pies are a great budget saver choice. You can get four of them for like $3.50 and they make a great breakfast. I'm gonna try that. Oh man that thing is uncooked. What do you think? Yeah, it's a little cold. So we're just gonna watch the rest of sunset, eat the rest of our chicken goujons and then I think we're just gonna go and see the fireworks.