Sydney: Final Week in Australia

We flew from Melbourne to Sydney, skipping Tasmania due to budgetary restrictions. (Gotta love those budgetary restrictions.) Upon our return to Sydney, we stayed in King's Cross, a backpacker haven. King's Cross is a heady mix of lovely Victorian row houses, many impeccably kept up, and red-light district sights. It contains many of the least expensive hostels in Sydney, making it crawl with backpackers. During the weekends, Sydney's party crowd shows up in short dresses (girls) and open shirts (boys) to mingle with the prostitutes, dealers, strippers, and backpackers. Weeknights are a bit tamer but a scuffle in the streets is not unusual. The craziness abates two blocks away from the main drag, with some excellent coffee shops and at least one really cheap and quite good pasta place. Although the guidebooks and other experts say to get out of King's Cross quickly, we ended up staying here for our entire six day visits. (Joey found a group of guys to play basketball with. Although I have tried to change him, basketball outweighs bodysurfing any day.) We stayed long enough to get recognized at our favorite coffee shop and meet some of the people who actually live here. Like Melbourne, we "lived here."