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We left Sydney early to start our trip up the coast to Cairns, the first stop was a little beach town Newcastle. We people watched on the beach all day mainly the surfers before walking through the town and treating ourselves to some sweets. As it was quiet here we decided to go to the cinema and watched Les Mis. We all absolutley loved it and cried our eyes out the whole way through, it took me a while to recover but was such a good evening. Our accomadation here however was not great and that is putting it nicely, the kitchen was dirty and our beds didn't have any linen on, luckily we only had to stay here for one night. Turns out the bed sheets never actually arrived, the plus side being we got the night for free so felt a bit better about it saving 30 dollars.
Next stop after escaping Newcastle was Coffs Harbour and we were releived when our hostel was really nice. We spent the next day at the beach our standard day in Australia but it took us long enough to walk there so we deserved a rest. That evening we planned to have a few drinks at our bar but since the bouncers were charging we decided instead to stay in and have some chocolate, another great evening. We didn't have to catch the Greyhound bus till later the next day so took another LONG walk to see the famous giant Banana, it wasn't preserved as we thought and you could actually walk through it. A bit random but we had a picture and headed back, stopping off for a refreshing 30 cent mcdonalds ice cream, our staple diet.
It was then back on the bus and heading to Byron Bay, we had heard great things about Byron so were looking forward to it a lot and few lively nights ahead of us! We arrived around 9pm and Byron was in full saturday night swing. There were lots of people everywhere and it lived up to hippyish town that everyone had been describing to us. After a quick shower to freshen up we headed to a place called "Cheeky Monkeys" which was a bar with lots of tables that you could dance along and good music. The downside to this bar was the lack of air conditioning. Considering Australia is going through a heatwave at the minute, on top of it being the middle of their summer, we were BOILING! Our dancing was also a factor to this but we were so sweaty by the end of the night. All in all though, our first night in Byron was a great success.
We woke up (very hot again because our room was tiny with no air con, just a little fan to try and keep us cool) and got ready for a morning by the pool, the weather didnt stay that nice so by the afternoon we decided to head into the little town to try and sort out our route and trips for going up the East Coast. A few hours later and we had sorted everything out, and also found out that the $5 meals were available at Cheeky Monkeys...this was a deal we couldnt refuse+. We rushed back to get changed and then headed for our cheap dinner. We all had a fish burger which was a very generous portion and tasted delicious. 3 very full girls then headed back to the room and had an early night as we couldnt face dancing on a full stomach.
The next day we woke up to lovely sunshine, so went straight to the beach with our free hire bodyboards to play in the waves. A few hours of sunbathing and playing in the sea, which was great fun, we went to get ready for our 2 $5 meal at Cheeky Monkeys, tonight was the Kangaroo burger, so we couldnt miss out on that! It tasted quite like beef which we didnt expect, but was really good! We went back to the hostel to get ready to go out and ended back at Cheeky Monkeys for a night of singing and dancing!
The next day was another day spent at the beach, working on our tans, but unfortunately no $5 meal tonight, it was back to beans on toast. Our friend Jake who we'd left in Sydney was getting into Byron tonight so we went out to meet him. Again a very enjoyable night in Bryon.
Wednesday was our last full day in Byron and for a break of the beach we decided to take the bikes out from our hostel and ride up to the hostel. The ride was really fun and didnt take us long at all, but then we had a 45 minutes of a VERY steep incline and hundreds and hundreds of steps!! It was definitely the most exericse we had done all trip but the views from the top were definitely worth it. A quick downhill ride back and we went into town to look around the shops and treated ourselves to a ice-cream. We got a large one between the 3 of us and had lemon sorbet, white chocolate and boysenberry flavours...Delicious!
As it was our last night in Byron we thought it would be rude to not have one last $5 meal so treated ourselves to a Steak Burger, again very tasty. We thought that we would try a different bar tonight as we were getting a bit tired of the same music in cheeky monkeys so after getting ready in our hostel headed to another hostel that had a bar doing an open mic night! We decided to walk to this hostel and started to regret it at bit as the thunderstorm started and then the rain started to fall, heavily! We eventually arrived at the Arts Factory (the bar) looking like 3 drowned rats but it was worth it as this place was really cool and was very busy. When they were closing we headed back into town and went to a different club for a final night.
We have really enjoyed the atomosphere of Byron Bay, not too sure if we're cool enough/hippyish enough to fit in but all the same we had a great time. It was now time to head up the East coast a little bit more to a place called "Surfers Paradise".
Lots of Love Meg and Amy xxxxx
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