As we were in Sydney for a total of 11 nights this blog has alot of days to cover and hopefully it wont end up too much like a list and still be half interesting....here goes.

After spending the last two and a bit months travelling down the East Coast of Australia it was now time for our last stop of the adventure, Sydney. We arrived back in Sydney recharged and ready to get back amongst the big city atmosphere.

Our final journey on the trusty Greyhound bus down from Coffs Harbour was uneventful and as punctual as ever, dropping us ahead of schedule. We were meeting a couple of friends from Tadley (Elliot & Kirsty) who have been working and living in Australia since last September and Elliot had said he would come and pick us up from the bus stop. A very nice offer and even nicer as our bus arrived in Sydney at 11:45pm.

Standing waiting for our lift we knew we had arrived back in a city, regardless of the time there were still quite alot of people about, traffic jams and taxi driver beeping at every opportunity. At around 12:10pm a white Toyota rolled past us which seemed to take a leaf out of the taxi drivers books and honk the horn repeatedly, on second glance it wasn't a taxi it was our lift.

We grabbed our bags and Ell took us back to the hostel him and Kirsty had been staying for a month, as they were 'long termers' they had got to know the manager and got me and Belle a deal on a private room for the next 11 nights, thanks very much! The hostel was in the Kings Cross area of the city, which is one of the lively area's where locals and backpackers alike visit on weekends. It was like nothing we had seen all the way down the East Coast, there was hundreds of people walking, some stumbling about on either side of the road, all choosing which pub, bar, club or strip club to visit (Australia loves a strip club, they are everywhere).

Luckily for us the hostel was off a couple of quiet roads from the main 'strip' so we wouldn't have to worry about music until silly o'clock each night.

We checked in, had a quick catch up then hit the hay. It was a delight having our own room, not having to worry about people snoring or coming in late at night to wake us up, brilliant.

We arrived on a Friday night and after a beautiful nights sleep, Belle headed out to a fashion event which was taking place near by. Belle here... I walked for about an hour to find the place and in doing so, I walked straight past it. After walking about 20 minutes in the wrong direction I decided to turn around. Popped into the local cinema and asked where the Town Hall was. The woman looked at me a bit strangely as she pointed out it was actually attached to the cinema, just downstairs. I asked her about the event I was looking for and it had been cancelled. So a good 2 hour walk for not a lot. Although I did for a $1 book shop which I will be returning to. We met up with Ell & Kirsty (who both had the day off) and headed straight to one of Sydney's main attractions (not the Opera House but) Bondi Beach.

Bondi Beach was quite a bit smaller than we expected and smaller than alot of the beaches we had been to previously. It was Saturday afternoon, the sun was out and the beach was packed. We navigated our way through the sunworshipers and found a spot on the sand. To Belle's relief the sand on Bondi was not the 'squeaky' sand which seemed to be at alot of other beaches. While Kirsty & Belle caught some afternoon sun me and Ell went for a swim in the ledgendery water. The waves were pretty big and being in the surf was like that of Surfers Paradise, so after about 40 odd minutes of getting battered around we went back to the beach, which turned out to be less sunny than when we left, with clouds taking over the sky. It was too chilly to stay on the beach so we did the next best thing and headed for a beach front bar.

After a couple of beers, a taxi back to the hostel & dinner, we decided to head out for the night but after having a couple of glasses of the good stuff (goon) by the time we headed out it was either too expensive to get into the bars or they were closed, whoops. With nothing else left to do we turned in for the night.

The following day was pretty uneventful as we had a day chilling at the hostel before having a dinner of sweet and sour chicken (still with noodles but very tasty) before doing not much else before bed, at least for the girls. Myself and Ell decided to stay up and watch the two games which were on offer, Tottenham v. Liverpool at 10:00pm and Man Utd v. Chelsea at 1:00am, the last one a bit of a struggle, but well worth it.

With it now being Monday Ell & Kirsty headed for another week of work, whilst me and Belle could enjoy the backpacker life. The hostel put on a free breakfast every morning (Cerial & toast) which we took full advantage of, gearing ourself up for a exciting morning of washing. This complete we headed out for a stroll, found a book shop (which Belle had found previously) which sold books for $1, bought two of its finest and looked around some of the streets of Sydney. Where we walked was not anything special, the normal choice of shops and cafes but it helped us to start to get our bearings.

The next day was another day of exploring the city, which is massive, this time we decided to head down to arguabley Sydney's main attractions, the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. We strolled down towards the Harbour, through the botanical gardens, which had hundreds of tropical flowers to keep Belle sneezing, saw the 'flying foxes' (bats) which hang around in the trees (although these bats a huge - more like eagles!) before finally arriving at the harbour itslef.

As you can imagine the Opera house is pretty striking, with its white / cream triangular 'shells' sticking out from the harbourside, with the harbour bridge in the background. It was slightly strange seeing these two Australian icons in the flesh, they are plastered on any postcard or book (about Australia) from 95 different angles, that they were almost slightly disapointing, 'almost' being the key word as it was still an impressive sight!

After taking lots of pictures and taking the harbour in we headed down towards the main shopping district through the Sydney CBD. There was not much going on here, just quite a few high rise office blocks, so we kept going and made our way to the main shopping distict. Not stopping for long, we then decided to head back to the hostel for some dinner and to rest our tired feet for the evening.

Our fifth day in Sydney was a continuation of the previous two days with more walking to be done. This time we headed down to St. Mary's Cathedral, which we had seen the previous day. The cathedral it's self isn't particually old, but it is still impressive to look at as it dominates the surrounding, low lying area. It was also free to have a look round inside so we decided to take a wonder. You could see the moderness of the building from the inside and one thing I noticed was the number of 'confessional booths' there were, there seemed to be alot.

From the cathedral we crossed the road and into one of Sydney's parks, on this occassion Hyde Park. A nice open green space with trees lining the paths and a large fountain in the middle. We both thought that the fountain was an odd one, which was decorated with turtles and horses. Not that there is anything odd about that, what was odd though was that the horse heads and turtles both had water shooting out of them, which to us made it look like these animal were being violently sick.

Fountain critiqued, we then headed back down to the main shopping centre, Westfield and after walking past shops such as Prada & Gucci we soon decided that we couldn't even afford to window shop so headed back towards the cathedral and parks.

Koo had told us that she was going to be in Sydney for a couple of days when we were there so Belle was off to meet her. I on the other hand decided to continue treading the tourist trail and see what else I could find. It didn't take long as I made my way to the City Art Gallery, not something I would normally go to, but it was again free and therefore I was a art fan for the afternoon. I was probably in the gallery for about an hour and a half, making my way round the various exhibits, some interesting and some not so interesting. I think I appreciated the old landscape paintings more than previously but I was not so impressed with the modern art halls, to me it was just a collection of random objects which someone had decided to call 'art', with titles such as 'untitled'. An example of such fine work was a 4 'box shelves' mounted on a wall, all in a horzontal line, painted white, now to me this was more DIY than art, but hey I'm no expert so what do I know?

After a mostly interesting hour and a half I left the gallery and headed over towards the harbour again but this time to a place called Mrs Macquires Chair. It is an area of land 'one cove' from the opera house and is just a slightly different angle to view the opera house and bridge from. Walking towards the viewing points through the parks you get to notice the amount of parrots that are in Sydney, all looking for scraps left behind from picnics. Mrs Macquires chair was the side of a hill which had erroded somewhat and formed some kind of platform, to be honest Im not sure why it is called that, not a bad view though. My day of sightseeing ahd come to an end so I headed back to the hostel to meet Belle and have some dinner.

After spending the last three days exploring Sydney on foot myself and Belle meet up with Koo down at the harbour and decided to take the ferry across to Manly Island, about a 40 minute trip. We headed across the calm waters and arrived in Manly in search of the beach, which alot of people had said was very nice, they were not lying. However as soon as we left the sheltered town centre and got down onto the beach we were hit by a strong coastal wind which actually got quite chilly after a while. We had a snadwhich on the beach and braved the wind for as long as we could, abandoning any plans of going for a swim, we decided to have a walk around the town before heading to the Manly Museum. A small but fairly interesting collection of bits and pieces representing Manly's relationship with the water and surrounding area from old swimming costumes to paintings.

With the beach, town and museum all done we decided to head back to Sydney but before we left, we visited a 'Cold Rock.' Now Cold Rock is something that thanks to Joe, has been in our heads all the way down the East Coast (I admit mainly mine) and was highly recomended by Joe. Cold Rock is an ice cream shop and what you do is, pick a flavour ice cream and then pick an 'add in', which can be anything from mars bars to skittles or cookie dough. Your chosen ice cream is then put on a frozen work top and smashed and mushed together with your chosen 'add in's' and stuck on a cone, so what you end up with is your very own custom ice cream. Now previosuly we had hyped up Rivers too much and it was ultimately a disappoint, Cold Rock was was not the same though, it certainly matched our expectations!

Bellies full of ice cream we boarded the ferry back to Syndey just in time to see the sun set over the opera house and harbour bridge, a brilliant ending to a nice day trip.

We had now been in Sydney for a week and there were still places to go and explore this time China Town was our chosen destination. We made our way to Hyde Park, checking out the 'reflection pool' on the way, which although we did see a reflection in, was not anything to write home about. After about 25 minutes of walking we arrived in China Town which didn't look much different to other area's of Sydney at first, until we found the markets. A basement full of stalls selling various 'knock off' goods, the best set of markets we had been to, not that we bought anything. We then headed back out into day light and found a small street which was more like the China towns we had come to know. After stopping at a bakery to pick up a cheap snack we made our way down to Darling Harbour.

Pretty similar to the main Sudney Harbour but not as big, but surrounded by expensive restaurants, offices and the Maratime Museum, which as it was free (suprise suprise) we opted for. It had a vast selection of all things water related and a major exhibition on an expedition to the Antartctic. With some interesting pieces on show and several interactive sections we made our way round the museum for a good couple of hours.

It was Friday night and Ell and Kirsty had the weekend off so after another day of serious walking we rewarded ourselves with a trip to the pub round the corner and a $10 steak. Now from other blogs we have written, we have been out on a few occasions for deals on steaks, this one however was easily the best we have had, it was delicious. We washed it down with a couple of beers and a visit to another pub to meet someone Ell worked with (funnily enough from Tadley as well).

Pubs in Australia are very differnt to pubs in England, with no such thing as a country pub. The one we went to was more like a Ladbrooks with a bar. Near enough all of the pubs in Australia have bookies or at least a room full of 'Pokies' (slot machines) attached to it. After a bit more beer and Ell winning some money on the dogs we all headed back to the hostel.

Saturday morning and we had decided during the week that we would go up to the Blue Mountains on the weekend. Koo had come and checked into the same hostel as us and in the late morning all five of us pilled into Ell's car (after doing some serious tidying) and started the two hour journey. Now the weather was not the usual sun and blue skies, infact it was chilly, grey and damp, perfect weather for the trip. On the two and a bit hour journey we hit some traffic making the journey longer, and as we got closer headed into fog, which got increasingly thicker. None the less we all jumped out the car to see if we could at least see one of the 'Three Sisters'....we couldn't! From the viewing platform was a large open canyon with the 'Three Sisters' dominating the horizon - or at least that's what should have been there, all we saw was thick white fog, barely being able to see 10ft into the canyon. With this being an absolute failure we all got back in the car and headed for home.

The plan for the day had been, Blue Moutains, back in time for the England rugby game and then off out in the evening. With the fog and traffic we were running behind schedule, now a bit cold, disheartend and hungry we decided to stop off for a McDonalds on the way home (mainly as it was the only food place we passed). With this stop we made it back half way through the second half of the game. In reflection we had spent our Saturday completing a four / five hour round trip all for some greasy american food. Ah well, the night that followed was more of a success.

We had arranged to meet some friends which Belle and Koo knew from uni and a girl called Jemma who we had WWOOF'd with. Over a couple of beers in the hostel we caught up before heading out to one of Kings Cross' many bars. Our chosen venue sold drinks in tea pots, which the girls were a big fan of, myself and Ell stuck to the beer.

We turned relegious the next day and used Sunday as it was supposed to be, as a day of rest (without the church part). With a late night, few beers and rubbish weather (it rained all day) we barely even left the hostel, a quick trip to the supermarket was about as exciting as our day got.

Monday was very much the same, except we got stuck into some more washing, in preperation for going to New Zealand and popped to the post office to send a box of bits back home. We sent this by sea which takes "6 weeks to 2 months" so depending on which route the box takes on the way home, we could beat it back and be ready to sign for it. The highlight of the day was dinner, with the four of us cooking up a curry.

Our last full day in Syndey (day 11) involved getting the last of our bits together, packing up our bags and a brief trip into Sydney centre, where I replaced my broken headphones with a new set.

After finding out how nice the $10 steak was on the Friday night, we decided to go back there one last time before we left. Belle, me, Kirsty and Ell headed for the pub, meeting a couple we had met in Halong Bay (Hayley and Dave, who were now working in Sydney) for some dinner. The steak again was excellent, the beer / wine (actual wine not goon) was cold and the live entertainment in the bar was Karaoke. None of us had the bottle to go up and sign but we sat and listened to the attempts of others. It was a great way to spend our last night.

It was hard to believe but we had been in Syndey for 11 nights and come to the end of our three months in Australia. So after a lift to the airport from Ell, we said our good byes and headed for our plane.

Before heading down to Sydney we were concerned that 11 nights in one place was be too much, but in reflection it wasn't. It was great to catch up with Ell and Kirsty (a big thanks to them for looking after us), seeing Koo, Hayley and Dave again and just enjoying the sights of Sydney. It was also nice to have our own private space, where we didn't have to worry about being woke up in the early hours of the morning by drunks or people snoring. It was also brillaint being able to unpack our bags and have a bit of a 'base' for a few nights, almost a mini break from backpacking.

Sydney is a huge city with lots to see and do and we tried to do as much as possible in our time there, it was great fun and the company made it even better, thanks again to Ell and Kirsty.