Faux Pas

The perks of living in Sydney seem endless and one of my favourites is being able to hop on a plane to explore new beaches for the weekend. Myself and my housemate Faye often run out of work on a Friday night, hand luggage in tow and jump straight on a plane from the office to have a 48 hour adventure somewhere new.

This time we chose Byron Bay and it did not disappoint. I'm in love. I want to be a beach bum forever.

After a major storm in Sydney it was touch and go as to whether we'd actually make it out of the airport, as all flights bar ours were cancelled. With a stroke of luck, we boarded on time and ordered a glass of wine after taking off only 10 minutes late. The flight was seriously turbulent and I nearly had several meltdowns, but I downed my wine and grew a pair.

We finally arrived at our hotel around 9pm, dumped our bags and headed straight to the nearest bar for a celebratory G&T. Byron has such a chilled out, laid back vibe with live music most nights... Absolute perfection. We listened to some tunes, had a few drinks and caught up on our previous week (I never see Faye in the week as she's a lawyer and works too hard) and then called it a night before we got carried away.

On Saturday morning we took a stroll from our pad along Belongil Beach to town, which was about 15 minutes away. We fuelled up at Byron Fresh Cafe for brunch before we trekked up to the lighthouse viewpoint; exploring many beaches and coves along the way. The views from the top were stunning and we were lucky enough to see some dolphins larking around below which was pretty sweet. Faye thought they were fish. Oh no.




After dodging bluebottles, noshing off all the ice-cream, getting rather sunburnt and dehydrating ourselves, we explored the town and headed back to Treehouse on Belongil to refuel with pizza and wine. By this point it was 7pm and time for us to find the best local haunts and cause some trouble. If you have only one night in Byron, here are my suggestions:

Start off at The Railway bar where there's live music, a good mixture of locals and tourists and long tables where you can chat with strangers over a G&T. It's really laid back and the perfect place to start the evening. People were up dancing at 8pm and there were no pretentious people in sight.

Then move on to Balcony Bar for a cocktail or two looking over the town. It's a perfect people watching spot if you get a seat at the balcony. It's very chilled and they have a beautiful interior. We came back on Sunday for a (non alcoholic) beverage to cure the hangover.

We took a pit stop next at Ozy Mex which could possibly serve the best burrito that ever has existed. I could have eaten alllll of the pulled pork however I would have been asleep in a delicious Mexican induced coma, so resisted.

To carry on the Mexican theme, we went to Miss Margarita's for some strawberry margaritas to keep us nicely topped up. Very cool, budget friendly cocktail bar with lots of options on the menu. It was shutting up fairly early (standard Australia) but we managed to see off a few before the tequila was shut away.

Next we went to Beach Hotel as everyone seemed to be flooding there and this is where things start going hazy for me. It was rammed, played a mixture of 5ive, Backstreet Boys and music with no lyrics (I need a lyric so don't know artist names). At some point one of the bar women had several buckets of ice water poured over her by the other bar staff. I'm unsure if that's a regular occurrence or if it was a novel way of sacking someone. Either way, you get an idea of the kind of establishment it is.

Finally we went to La La Land to end our night. I don't remember much apart from there was a lot of dancing. I think. It'll forever be a mystery. Then we ate pies before passing out in a happy, slightly sunburnt and terribly drunk haze.

Sunday started at 10.20am when we were woken up by a knock at the door as check out was 20 minutes ago. We jumped in a cab to The Farm for lunch as food was the only thing to help us now. The Farm is beautiful, they have a mini cow, a wishing well, an ice cream cart, a barbeque area, other animals dotted around and Three Blue Ducks restaurant which had a pretty long waiting list. After an hour wait, we finally sat down and ordered some mussels and pork ribs which took too long to arrive! It was lovely food, however I'd recommend going to the cafe next door or take a picnic.


After an afternoon napping on the beach, it was time to hop on a plane back to Sydney and to wave off yet another gorgeous weekend.

I couldn't recommend heading to Byron enough, even if it's just a short stop off like us... Go! I want to go back already. I've 100% fallen in love.