A few blocks back from the sand on Hall Street, Gertrude & Alice is the antidote to Bondi's activewear-and-açaí strip: a rambling secondhand bookshop and café where you read at communal tables stacked with books and nobody hurries you out. It has been a fixture of the local literary scene for decades, hosting readings, book clubs and long philosophical arguments over coffee.
The food is honest café fare — soups, salads, cakes — but the reason to come is the atmosphere, which is bookish, warm and entirely unlike the beachfront. A reminder that there is a real neighbourhood behind Bondi's postcard.