I’ve been visiting Sydney all my life and, indeed, even lived in Sydney for a few months many years ago. So, I’m way, way past posting “first impressions”. But perhaps a small number of reflections would be OK?
First, the public transport seems to operate well – at least to the places we wanted to get to. The buses aren’t always “user friendly” on the ground (compare London with its excellent maps at many stops), but with a little planning, they’re not too bad. Frequencies aren’t too bad either, especially on the trains even later in the evening. But the staffing levels seems very high: guards on every train as well as station assistants on many platforms. And numerous people in “high vis” gear at the tram (sorry, light rail) stops and a whole crowd of them at the Bondi junction bus interchange.
The traffic often seems congested – partly because of the topography, of course – and we noticed a few “frayed tempers”.
There are probably bitcoin ATMs elsewhere, but the first one I’ve ever seen was in Sydney (near Chinatown). Just what it does or even dispenses, I don’t know, because I didn’t try to use it.
I was a little surprised when one of the restaurants at which we ate declined to split our bill between two credit cards. I know that restaurants often state that they “won’t split bills”, and I can understand that it’s often a nightmare when people want to split an account according to what each person consumed, but this is the first time I’ve actually encountered an establishment that wouldn’t divide a not-insignificant bill equally between two credit cards.
Although the wearing of masks on public transport is “strongly recommended”, in fact few were to be seen (while we were there, before the latest scare). However (as I’ve said), checking in with a QR code, especially at restaurants, was usually carefully enforced.
NSW has container deposit legislation, and I noticed a couple of machines to refund container deposits.
Musings and Mutterings 