Day 11 - Coastal Walk, Wander around Sydney - Royal Gardens & Art Gallery of New South Wales, Escape Room

When I vacation, I like to at least run once in every city we stay in. We had to check out of our hotel pretty early, but I promised myself I would run if I got up early enough, which I did. I knew it would be hilly, but I opted to go back to the Coastal Walk. It WAS hilly, but also really pretty (and warm).

Not really a great picture, but I really loved the bathroom at this hotel. The shower head was perfect! I am hoping to get one like it at home, haha.

There was no way we were going to pay more money on Ubers, so we decided we would need to figure out the buy system. Sunday would be a good day since apparently it's a discount day. We were told you could "probably" use a credit card in lieu of an Opal Card, so we figured we would try. It worked for both Ariel and I because I had two cards that have the "tap" feature, which is what you need for this to work. Luckily Lisa and Julia were able to ride the bus for "free" and we were able to figure this out at the first train station on the way to our next hotel.

We were actually able to check in early (again!) and after getting situated we decided we would just walk around all day and see what we could get done. We also, impulsively, booked an Escape Room for the evening.

First stop was East Sydney Brewing where I got my beer of the day and we all shared some french fries until we decided what we would be doing for dinner.

We figured we would check out all the major sites, but got a little lost and ended up in a shopping district. I impulsively bought a clearance pair of Ugg slippers (which ended up being deep discounted to around $30).

Finally, we got to the Sydney Harbour Bridge!

And the opera house!

Directly across from the opera house was an entrance into the Royal Botanic Gardens. Entry was free, so we wandered around for at least an hour, while heading back in the general direction of our hotel.

We noticed that the Art Gallery of New South Wales was open, and also no charge for entry (unless you wanted to see one of the special exhibits), so we walked around there for a bit also.

We were all hungry, and opted to walk back and find food closer to the hotel. We were staying in Woolloomooloo, which was fun to try to pronounce. Even more fun when I found this section of street signs to help people!

We opted to just pick up some pizzas (from Pizza Hut, no less) and eat in the hotel room. We weren't sure how long it would take to find the escape room location, so we headed out shortly after. In the train station we thought it would be fun to "re-create" an older picture of Julia and Ariel. Not sure how well it turned out, but we thought it was funny.

Found the Escape Room with minimal difficulty. Unlike the last one we had done, we were able to use walkie talkies to get clues buy communicating with the staff. Most of the stuff we figured out pretty easily, but there were a few things that stumped us. We did end up solving the room with 17 seconds to spare. Pretty stressful! (Apparently the room only has a 52% success rate, even with hints, so we felt pretty good about that).

We had a lot of fun with our weird post-room pictures. We had to walk back to the train station and I really liked this building that had the Christmas decorations already up - it was really pretty!

We stopped at the grocery store near the hotel and picked up salads and fruit for dinner and breakfast the next morning.

We were watching some weird Australian Law & Order type show that everyone else fell asleep during. I tried to stay awake, ended up not finishing it and then tossed and turned ALL NIGHT. Grrr.