Continuing my afternoon stroll takes me into the inner city suburb of

Darlinghurst

Darlinghurst is a short walk from my previous suburb of Surry Hills. Passing through a block comprised entirely of uber eats riders led me to the famous Oxford Street.

If you follow Oxford Street upstream, you'll hit its classy end in Paddington (winner of the 2018 Platinum Ibis award), but the famous bit of Oxford Street is right here in Darlinghurst, where the road houses what Wikipedia calls Sydney's "gay district".

What makes a road gay? The quick eats and sex shops are a start, although not that important a factor,

of course, you've got gay bars and a generous amount of rainbow paint,

but the most defining factor to me are the places to buy speedos.

I followed the road a few steps south to hit Taylor Square. Taylor Square is a point where Oxford Street meets another main road, Flinders Street.

To celebrate a hell of a lot of asphalt, they've installed a small town square.

Taylor Square also leads to the rainbow traffic crossing. Unfortunately, the crossing is technically part of Surry Hills again so it would be illegal for me to talk about it here.

I returned to - and crossed - Oxford Street to explore the rest of the suburb.

Across the road from Taylor Square I found this funky thing,

a few old buildings including these,

and some swirly stairs into the depths of the earth.

These were full of assorted garbage.

Continuing in deeper,

I learned that Darlinghurst has more to offer than just sandwiches and gay bars. Among tree-lined streets, it turns out that this place has a boatload of pretty heritage to offer.

Find the right intersection and you can even catch an old-meets-new peek at Sydney's skyline.

The more I walked around here the more I enjoyed this place. This blog post is quickly turning into a series of "look at this pretty building" pictures, but I suppose that's what Darlinghurst does well.

I passed by a bin filled above the rim,

which turned out to be a short distance from the Sydney Jewish Museum, a museum on Jewish history which also happens to be housed in an interesting building.

Also of interest nearby is a tranquil park across the road,

where I met this pigeon having its dinner,

and an overly ornate drinking fountain,

with views of the fairly impressive St Vincent's Hospital.

I kept moving, passing through one of the suburb's commercial districts, a strip full of bars, restaurants and cafes,

and, for some reason, a country club.

I followed the strip north, passing art,

the bluest store on earth,

and a very red old fire phone, to contrast.

All of this led to the suburb's northern border with Potts Point, best identifiable by Kings Cross' iconic Coca Cola sign.

Having already completed Potts Point, I didn't keep going into the next suburb, but instead skirted Darlinghurst's border, heading west towards the city, in the mood for my first outside coffee since the lockdowns.

Luckily, Darlinghurst soon delivered, with a woodfire pizza joint that also happens to do coffee immediately appearing in a garlic-smelling gift from above - "Mammas Woodfire Pizza".

The intention was to takeaway, but the surprisingly serene balcony overlooking the main road was enough to change that plan. The coffee for me and hot chocolate for Mrs Completing Sydney (I didn't leave her in Surry Hills) went down a treat as our first post-lock-down-but-still-kind-of-locked-down sitdown dining.

There was one other diner in there who was enjoying a pepperoni pizza and a Corona beer (topical). His pizza looked pretty legit, and so I plan to return here for food some day.

From here, we started our trek back home, taking us through more of Darlinghurst.