Sydney vs London
There are already enough articles on the web comparing the Opera House to Big Ben, but if you're thinking of making the move from one city to the other -- or even just visiting on holiday -- what practical differences should you expect?We moved from London to Sydney in November 2014, and here's what we've noticed:
Nightlife
In pubs and bars, while you'll find Sydney drink sizes smaller than London (beer is served in Schooners, which are only 75% the size of a pint; and a typical glass of wine is only 150ml), the price of beer stays the same while a glass of wine is slightly cheaper. Where Sydney excels, though, is Happy Hours -- to be found at almost all pubs, you'll easily find house wine and beer for $4 or $5 before 7pm. Get them in early!Sydney has pubs, bars and "small bars". The pubs tend to be older, massive venues and tend to called "hotels" (see below) but generally serve cheap beer and good food with a food standard higher than London pubs. Small Bars are a recent addition to the Sydney scene and came about after the licensing laws were updated in the 2000's. They are only allowed to have a maximum of 60 seats and usually have a quirky, intimate feel and friendly service. Some are "secret bars", which you could walk past without realising; their whereabouts are spread via social media and Google Maps!
Restaurant-wise, wherever you go in Sydney, you'll find it packed with Chinese, Thai and Japanese restaurants; whereas in London you'll find an Indian on every street. Good curry is hard to come by in Sydney but there are a couple of good places if you know where to look!
When is a hotel not a hotel?
Due to laws introduced in 1916 and not repealed until the 1960's, you'll find that Sydney has a lot of large pubs calling themselves "hotels". Whereas in London you'd probably avoid going to a hotel for a pint as you'd assume it would charge over the odds, in Sydney it's the opposite -- best prices are generally to be found in "hotel" pubs (though not the Hilton, of course!)
Inside these pubs, you'll also often find a "VIP Lounge". Far from bumping into Brad Pitt or Jennifer Lawrence inside, these rooms house fruit machines ("pokies") and sometimes a sports betting desk. When laws were changed in the 2000's requiring pubs to isolate their gambling machines from the main pub area, the term "VIP Lounge" was coined to encourage people to venture into the new sealed-off room.
Public Realm
Sydney is well provisioned with free public toilets, you'll find them at almost every station and generously dotted around town too. In comparison, London will usually charge you for using public toilets, if they exist at all. And whereas many London bars and clubs have "no spray, no lay" man on hand in their toilets after 10pm to help relieve you of your cash, in Sydney he is nowhere to be found.
Daily Necessities
Doing your weekly shop is where London excels -- your average basket of groceries will be up to 50% cheaper in Tesco or Morrisons than it will be in Coles or Woolworths in Sydney. Convenience stores are even worse, whereas in London you might expect to be charged 70p ($1.30) for a can of coke, in Sydney a convenience store will quite happily charge you $3 for the same can.
Pop out of the office for lunch and again London wins -- an abundance of shops offering lunchtime meal deals for under £4, whereas in Sydney you'd be lucky to get a sandwich for that price.
Newspapers, magazines, books -- yet again, London is cheaper. Sydney has highly inflated prices for printed materials, it seems.
Alcohol can't be bought from supermarkets in Sydney, which leads to special "bottle shops" where you need to pick up your booze fix. Wine is similarly priced to London and sometimes cheaper, but a 6-pack of beers will easily set you back $20. Go for the 24-pack, though, and the price becomes much more reasonable; but still not as cheap as you can pick them up in a London supermarket.
Transport
Public transport in Sydney is cheap -- cheaper than London for local journeys, and much cheaper for longer suburban journeys. The Opal card in Sydney is very much like the Oyster in London, but has a lower weekly cap and allows you to travel throughout the state of NSW within that cap. In London, the cap only applies within your travel zones and going any further afield will require a rather expensive train ticket.
On the buses, both cities provide a good service, but London wins in terms of passenger information; London bus stops all provide route maps and clear indications of where the buses go from there; in many cases they have electronic "next bus" real time indicators too. Then once you're on the bus, automated stop announcements tell you what the next stop will be so you know when to get off. Sydney has none of these things, so knowing which bus to get on, and then when to get off it, is a dark art that involves gluing your eyes to Google Maps on your phone.
However, Sydney's roads are more free-flowing so you'll find bus trips a lot faster than in London.
If you're driving, you'll find petrol a steal in Sydney -- up to 40% cheaper than in the UK. However, there are a lot of tolls charged to use the motorways around Sydney, which partially makes up for this.
Getting hold of your money
This is an area where London is certainly more user-friendly -- most ATM's don't charge a fee to withdraw money, and those that do make it obvious by showing it on the screen before you put your card in. In Sydney, however, depending on which bank you're with, you only have access to a limited set of ATM's fee-free which can be frustrating; but most towns have an ATM from each of the major four banks so it's usually not hard to find one.
Letting agents lazy
"Cheque, Savings or Credit"?
When you go to pay with your card in a Syndey shop, the cashier will ask you this question. What are they talking about? Well, Australia was actually one of the first countries to embrace paying by card, and they created their own system call EFTPOS in the 1980's to allow people to do just this. It allowed you to link both your Current Account ("Cheque") and Savings Account ("Savings") to the card, and choose which account you want to pay from at the till.
Then later on, when VISA and Mastercard took over the world, banks started to support them as well, leading to the "Credit" option. In your online banking with most Australian banks, you can configure which of your accounts each of the buttons is linked to. Remember, Paypass always links to the Credit button! In many Sydney shops, you'll find they add a 1% surchange to payments by Credit, but not to Cheque or Savings payments -- this is due to the lower fees charged to them by EFTPOS than by VISA.
In the UK by comparison, we didn't get into card payments until VISA and MC came along, so there's no question asked and no choice to make.
Cockroaches are a fact of Australian life. If you're thinking of coming out to Oz but are scared of all the deadly wildlife like funnel-web spiders, snakes and sharks, think again -- you'll rarely (if ever) see any of those, but what you will see an abundance of is cockroaches.
You get used to them. Have a can of Mortein (the Australian bug-spray) on hand in your house, and spray them when you see them. You can also get Cockroach bait traps which you leave around, and the roaches eat the poisoned bait and then go home to die.
In London, I've never seen a cockroach. I'm told that they do exist, but will only appear if your house is left in a state where it looks like it's been hit by a bomb!
Tabloid papers
If you love your tabloid papers like The Sun or the Daily Mail, you'll be disappointed in Australia. The closest Sydney has to a tabloid is The Daily Telegraph (which ironically is the name of a broadsheet paper in London) but it doesn't rival the good old UK tabloid press for their combination of news, gossip and fun.
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