Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Beach Bumming It

There are so many reason to like Sydney. Now let's add a 30-minute bus ride from downtown and you're at one of world's most famous beaches. Pretty great huh? To top that Bondi Beach felt like a million miles from the city center area, but still maintained the casual-easy-going-feel of Sydney. We were utterly charmed by the beautiful little beach area and even more impressed by how unpretensious the locals were. I guess when you live somewhere this beautiful you haven't got much to complain about.During our travels we spent quite a bit of time on beaches. What can we say we love sun, sand and wearing as little as possible. Bondi Beach seem to sum up everything we loved on our travels - friendly locals, accessibility through public transportation, beautiful scenery, the ocean, the city and an environment and prevailing attitude to just let it all go and relax. On top of all that Bondi Beach lacked the things we found annoying about our travels - crowds, obnoxious tourists, hawkers who wouldn't leave you alone even if you faked sleeping and beach rules. Yes, many beaches have rules! No umbrellas here, it costs if you want to lay here, beach resort guest only and the list goes on. Not on Bondi Beach. We were free to enjoy our day at the beach.Alot of people asked if we tried surfing in Bali and no we didn't. Getting spun around like you're on the inside of washing machine just didn't sound fun. But as we sat watching the surfers at Bondi Beach we had second thoughts, the surfers were amazing, much better than anywhere else we encountered on our travels. And yes, the ladies held it down also, surfing in bikinis, none of this wetsuit business.Here's an interesting side note. Summer in Australia are December, January and February; Fall is March, April, May and so on. For some reason we thought that the seasons would be called the same as in the northern hemisphere, but Summer would be cold and so on. Nope, summer is hot and sunny even if it's in the dead of winter where we come from. With that being said I guess Christmas is always in the summertime. Being the end of summer and beginning of fall the water was colder than we found in SE Asia, but Mike braved it regardless - isn't he gorgeous?After spending the day at Bondi Beach we could immediately see the appeal of being a beach bum. Going from business suit to a bathing suit in one city made the appeal even more.

No comments: