Byron Bay Christmas

For the holiday week we decided to go to Byron Bay, NSW. Byron Bay sits on cape Byron on the North New South Wales coast. The small town boasts a pretty, functional light house, busy down town, hip restaurants and fantastic beaches. It is a green town that is plastic bag free and McDonalds and other fast food chains are prohibited to operate.

Byron is a beutiful small town that unkowing to us, swells to mega proportions during the Christmas week. We both agreed that we liked Byron and would go back again eagerly but never again during any public holiday. It is way too crowded and way too expensive as all hotel and meal charges essentially double during the holiday week. You live and you learn i guess.

We got there and got lost but eventually checked into The Bamboo Cottage, a B n'B we reserved in town. It was nice and the house was well kept by the owner Bernice. She gave us some info on the town and things to do around town but we ignored it and chose to our benefit to get out of town during peak hours.

Byron was kind of a hippie town until money discovered it. I believe it's history is somewhat paralell to that of Laguna Beach. Byron was once a little art community with cheap rents now there are swanky villas in the hills and a $30,000 a month rehab frequented by supermodels and sports figures. There were lots of hippies about but with all of the high end hair salons offering "dread locks" for a hundred bucks a pop, it was hard to tell who was really on the road or just looking earthy. Most were just looking earthy I suspect as any meal could not be had for under $25.00 a head.

Happily, although the restaurants were ungodly expensive were all very good. Every meal seemed better than the last and each bordered on exessively good. Everynight instead of braving the packed bars and night clubs we opted to head back to the hotel with some beer and sit in on the dark deck and have a drink with some of the other guests we befriended.

We had a great time in town but the best times were in the surrounding areas which will be in the following posts.

Merry Christmas