It was a bit of a bucket list item to go and see in the New Year in at Sydney Harbour, and this year we neither had COVID nor other plans, we thought we would go for it. We certainly left it to the last minute, booking a hotel a few days before, then a dinner package the day of, but it all worked out well in the end.
We started our travels the day before, leaving work on time and breaking the back of the journey before stopping overnight in Lithgow in the Workies Club. We arrived too late for dinner, but the motel itself was nice and quiet so after we picked up a takeaway we got a decent night sleep.
We had a delicious breakfast in the Hometown Cafe on the main street in Lithgow before continuing down to Parramatta, where we had booked our hotel at a less extortionate price than the city centre.
We checked into our hotel and rested for a couple of hours as we knew it was going to be a long night!
Walking down to the train station via the main street, we spotted a few places to check out the next day, before hopping onto a train into the city centre. We got off at Wynyard Station and walked down to Circular Quay, the crowd building the closer we got! Circular Quay was all ticketed for the event and fenced off, and it took a bit of pushing through the throngs of people to get to where we needed to be.
We had a reservation at the Guylian Chocolate Cafe for a 5 course meal with entry to East Circular Quay included. Essentially this meant we had a fantastic view of the front of the Harbour Bridge.
Most courses were delicious, but we had recently discovered that we aren’t fans of Oysters!
At 9PM they had the ‘family’ fireworks, and everyone jostled for position to see those. After that, the crowds did clear somewhat as there had been a lot of families there.
At midnight, there was still some jostling to do but we ended up with a far better view. After taking a couple of photos, we put our phones away to enjoy the experience of being there. Some people filmed the whole thing!
After that, chaos ensued. We stayed at the table for another half an hour to let the crowds start to disperse, then walked back up to Wynyard station. There were so many people waiting to get on that they were encouraging people to continue walking to Town Hall station, which we did. We waited there for another 30 minutes before being told we wouldn’t be able to get on a train there either. We trekked up to Central station, where, after probably another half an hour wait, we did eventually get on a train! We were lucky to have made it back to the hotel before 3am!
After a bit of lie in on the Sunday we wandered back down toward the station in search of breakfast, but not much was open. We did get a delicious mango smoothie to share from Panntea Parramatta, then jumped back on the train into the city. I was surprised at how little was open vs the sheer number of people around.
We had an appointment at the Genius Bar at the Apple Store and had planned to get the boat back to Paramatta afterwards, but it would have meant a lengthy wait. As nothing was open, we decided to take the train back, and explore Paramatta centre a bit more.
The Westfield Shopping centre itself was open, but none of the shops were – it was a bit eerie inside really.. The main street was now bustling however with Messina Icecream and most of the restaurants now open.
We noticed a few people in football shirts and a quick Google told us that the Western Sydney Wanderers were playing MacArthur that afternoon, in the stadium that we could see from our hotel room. We decided to go, ordered our tickets online 15 minutes before kick off and enjoyed a beer or two during the game.
After the game, we headed to a restaurant we had picked out to try – The Meat and Wine Co. We didn’t actually have any wine, but did have some delicious meat!
On Monday morning, we headed out for breakfast at Latte on the Rocks, before tackling the drive back to Forbes.
Traffic was slow on the route through the mountains, so we drove further than planned for the first leg, and stopped somewhere new – Blackheath.
We found a nice, busy café for a coffee and some lunch, before continuing our journey home.
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