CAIT AROUND THE WORLD

February 13, 2023 — Checkout times for most hostels fall around the 10am mark, so it was an early up-and-out day for me as I was transferring from my hostel in central Sydney out to Bondi Beach! I’d mostly packed the night before so I just had to grab a few last things. Unfortunately, I left an earbud here so I’m going to have to keep checking with the hostel lost and found! Keep your fingers crossed for me!

It’s really easy to get to Bondi from Circular Quay, so I took the L train to the harbour first, then caught the 333 North Bondi bus, which runs straight to Bondi Beach without requiring a bus change at Bondi Junction. About a half hour later, I got off the bus just a half block from my hostel.

Happily, Wake Up! Bondi Beach, where I stayed, has free luggage storage so I dropped what I didn’t need and went for a little walk in Bondi. I was looking for a spot to watch the Super Bowl but unfortunately the bar was completely packed. I wandered around a little while longer looking for another spot but no dice. After a bit of a swim down at the beach, where there were awesome waves because a storm was starting to blow in, I ended up back at the hostel and had lunch up on the roof, which had such a good view of the ocean.

At 2:00pm, I went back down to reception and got checked in. It was a nice little surprise for me to find that I’d booked myself into a room with an ocean view (I’d forgotten about that). The view was so good and I was even able to get a bottom bunk for the first time in my travels so far! No worrying about waking people climbing down the ladder — amazing! It was also the bunk closest to the window, so I got to enjoy the view even more.

I had a lot of laundry to do when I got here, but the laundry facilities were pretty small for the size of the hostel. Both machines were completely full when I checked and I wound up holding off on doing anything for another day. I did, however, pop out and buy laundry soap. A lot of it. Which was overkill, but oh well.

I laid down for a while after the excitement of the morning and read my book while I waited for it to be time to go up to the roof for dinner. The really amazing thing about where I was staying was all the activities they organized. It made it pretty easy to meet people and had the added bonus of feeding me as the night I arrived was pizza night for $5. I chatted with some people from Europe while we ate.

This hostel really hammered home the point that everyone at a hostel is really trying to make friends. I was up on the roof in one of the loungers, by myself, and I watched a bunch of people — on their own, and already in groups — walk up to another table of people and just ask if they could sit. Everyone was so welcoming. I eventually got myself up too and went over there and asked if I could sit and ended up having a nice time. Maybe you can’t be best friends with everyone, but you can get to know everyone a little bit.

Post-pizza, I went for a short walk to buy some chocolate and then settled back into the room, hoping to turn in a little earlier in order to get up for the next morning, which was going to start with yoga. (Stay tuned to find out how that turned out.)

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