Keep calm, it was not my wedding

I found myself back to Sydney again after three months, to attend a friend's wedding. For some unknown reason, the reasonably priced hotels were all booked out. As I would be attending a wedding, I am not thrilled to stay in a dorm and get ready in shared bathroom. I had my share of experience hostels in Australia (albeit not much) and they are not the nicest hostels. In my humble opinion, Australia's hostels need to buck up on keeping the area clean. Anyway, that explained the title of this post - Sydney Harbour Marriott. Marriott turned out to the one of the most economical priced hotel of what little choice leftover, bearing in mind I shared a room with two other friend. Even Airbnb was no luck.

Christmas tree in the lobby

Wedding day was on a Saturday and I was lucky to score a day off on the Friday before. I have requested for an early check-in if possible when I made my reservation. The room was not yet ready but I was given an access to the Early Arrival room.


My initial intention was only to change out of my jeans into a more comfortable shorts as Sydney was much warmer on the said week. However I was distracted with the yummy butter cookies on offered and stayed longer. It was partly true but my friends were scheduled to land in about an hour so I decided to linger a little, read some papers, charged my phone while waiting for them to have lunch together. Otherwise I would've gone out and have some morning tea before lunch!

Those were yummy cookies!

Anyway, I was alone in the Early Arrival room. There were a few partitions to each lounge area, I think it was designed in a way that one could enjoy the facilities (including sleeping and showering) with a little more privacy.



Unfortunately I do not have any photos of the room we were in as I was out when my friends went up to the room first. As they were already made themselves comfortable in the room, I didn't want to go around taking photos of the room.

Our reservation was for the Bridge view room, with two double beds request. I was offered to pay to $30 to upgrade to the Opera view room for an earlier check-in as well as a view of the Opera House. I decided to wait for our initial Bridge view room. However we were later on upgraded without extra cost as the check-in staff made a little mistake when checking us in. I think he was embarrassed of it therefore he offered the upgrade despite we didn't ask for it. :P

View from Opera view room

The view from the room are the only photos I took. I was actually a little disappointed with the size of the room. I would appreciate if the room is a little more spacious as it certainly was rather snug with two double beds.

I don't usually try out pools in hotels I stayed in, mainly because my itinerary were usually packed to the brim and the fact that I can't swim. Now that I could move in the pool, and thought it would be a good idea to enjoy the pool, I managed to drag my butt to the pool and did a couple of rounds. The pool is not big and level at 1.4 meters. There was also a hydrotherapy spa and sauna next to it but I only tried the pool.

We also tried their room service meal for dinner, simply because we were too tired and lazy to move after attending the wedding ceremony on Saturday. The three of us shared a cajun chicken pizza and club sandwich. Room service has an extra $5 charge on top of the food price.


Note: For once I have not taken any picture of the food for the whole trip! *gasp* Though I wish I did now, grin... all for blogging material, ok ;)