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Left Port Macquarie on our last ever Oz Greyhound around 5ish on Sat 6th and consequently arrived in Sydney at about 11:30. Rather excitingly we crossed the iconic Harbour Bridge on the way and giving us our first view of the Opera House - a more widely recognised symbol of Australia than the kangaroo apparently - and exited Central Station for the short walk to our hostel. We are staying in a place called Maze Backpackers that came recommended and for the location it is in (very central to all of the main attractions in the city), it was very good value for money. After checking in, I had a very important question to ask the man behind the counter... are they showing the England game against Kazakhstan?!? Thankfully they were which saved a minor strop on Dan's behalf. Watched the game (kicked off at 1am Sunday local time) and went to bed about 3ish knowing we could have a decent lie in in the morning, especially as we were the only people in our 4 person dorm room.
True to form, we didn't leave the hostel until about one-ish in the afternoon to get our first taste of Sydney in the daytime, and we had lucked out - we had a beautiful sunny day, one of the first in a week or so. We were going to Manly to visit some of Dan's extended family who live there and were going to get a proper Aussie BBQ, so we were excited to say the least! Walked down to Circular Quay which is where all of the ferries that go to and from the various other parts of Sydney depart from, and found out what time our one to Manly was and bought our tickets before walking further round the Quay to where the Opera House is and getting some good views of the Harbour Bridge too. Had a little bit of lunch (didn't want to fill up too much before the BBQ), and just enjoyed the sunshine and headed to the bottle shop (couldn't be turning up at a BBQ empty handed of course!), and got on our ferry over to Manly. We had arranged to meet Bryan, Dan's Dad's cousin (so... first cousin once removed?! Thank you Wikipedia!) at the wharf in Manly, but there was a 'Wine and Food Festival' going on which made it a bit manic - managed to find him after cleverly spotting a red and white kayak sat atop his car. Result. Had a short journey to Curl Curl where he lives with his wife, Sue, and son, also Dan. Seeing as we had never met before we just found out a bit about each other, and passed on updates from the etc. Dan had spent two years in London, and had even spent a while in Beckenham and Bromley, but neither Dan nor Dan knew about the other one being there. We had a few drinks and were just sitting down to eat, when a group of Dan's mates arrived 'fresh' from the wine and food festival. It was about 6ish and they'd been drinking since noon. They were wasted, and it was hilarious, though poor Brian was stuck on his own with one guy, Paul, whilst cooking the BBQ. They wanted us to play catch up but we decided that wasn't a good idea! Dan even had a brief conversation with Paul's cousin who lives in Beckenham, as Paul decided we probably knew each other. We didn't. After the food and a few more drinks we checked the ferry times, and decided we ought to be on our way. After the ferry journey back to Circular Quay we were both bloody freezing so got a taxi the short journey back to the hostel. Watched Roger Federer win the French Open, before heading back to our room, where someone had moved in, but there was no sign of them!
After sleeping until mid-morning on Monday (8th) we got up and went to the supermarket so we could sort out our own meals for at least some of the time, and as the weather was still nice we bought stuff for a picnic lunch too. We had a lovely long walk through Hyde Park, The Domain, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, which were beautiful in the sunshine. We walked all the way around Farm Cove to 'Mrs Macquarie's Chair' a rock that looks like a chair (less interesting than it sounds... seriously), then back along the waterside before finding a nice patch of grass in the sun to sit and eat our picnic, literally in the shadow of the Opera House on the other side of Farm Cove. After just soaking up the sunshine for a bit, we walked over to Bennelong Point which is the bit of land that the Opera House is on, and took far too many photos, as you do, though the building really is spectacular. Whilst being an engineering and architectural marvel, it is actually smaller than I had imagined (smaller than the Taj Mahal which I thought would be a similar scale for some arbitrary reason), and it is shiny - covered in tiles which you can never tell from all of the pictures you see. Well worth seeing up close. Well played Jorn Utzon. (as you can tell Dan wrote this part and was in engineering heaven, loser!)
After taking our fill of photos we walked back through Circular Quay which was massively busy which was because it was a public holiday - this one is for the Queen's birthday. Why don't we get an extra bank holiday for that? Canada does it too, but there you go. It was very busy. We walked from Circular Quay to Darling Harbour to walk along the waterfront with it's myriad restaurants, cafes and bars. It was very busy here too as it was playing host to a Jazz and Blues festival, which was cleverly set up with the artists on floating stages in the harbour and the crowds on the shore. As we wandered around, dodging through the crowds, there was one jerk who walked straight into me... but turned out to be my mate Chris Jackman who was on my course at Uni and I hadn't seen since graduation, and although we had been in touch about meeting up at some point, we thought we had missed each other. Very random that in a city of 4 million we would run into each other, but we had a quick catch up before going our separate ways again. By this time we had done a lot of walking, so we got the monorail back to the hostel to chill for a bit before heading out for some pub grub dinner just around the corner. We were pretty knackered from the late nights so had a pretty early night.
The following day (Tues 9th) decided to check out another of Sydney's iconic locations, Bondi Beach, so we endeavoured to get over there to see what all the fuss was about, but only after going to the Rough-Guide-recommended Oxford Street. This involved our first use of the Sydney bus system, which after a little confusion caused by a ticket agent who didn't speak such great English, proved to be a doddle. Unfortunately Oxford Street was a bit anticlimactic, or at least the bit we got off and walked down was. Lots of small boutiquey shops but not much of the cafe scene that was supposedly there. Got on another bus which took us all the way to Bondi Beach. Now, being June it is actually winter here, and this meant that it was actually pretty cold right there on the beach (the wind comes straight of the Antarctic apparently which explains a lot), but being English we decided we were gonna bloody well walk along that beach no matter what the weather! We could see how it would be an amazing beach in Summer, especially so close to the city centre, but today there were only about 5 hardcore surfers and a bunch of joggers there. Instead of freezing atop the cliffside walks we got on a bus back to Bondi Junction and spent all afternoon shopping at the Westfield Centre there (same group as London woop!) after lunch at the swanky food court (though of course Dan had KFC hehe). Managed to shop ourselves out (I had the excuse that I needed warm clothes for NZ but subsequently bought a sleeveless jumper dress so perhaps not quite so practical?!) and came back to Hyde Park to walk to our hostel. Chilled out there for a bit before going to Darling Harbour for dinner, at a cool bar called Cargo - very pretentious but yummy pizzas. Stayed there for a while and wandered around the harbour before coming back here and getting some z's :o)
Had good intentions to fully utilise the morning today (Wed 10th) before meeting up with some more of Dan's family for lunch but of course didn't quite manage it! Met up with Trish, Dan's Dad's cousin in the main square of the CBD before walking down to Circular Quay to meet Dan's great aunt off the ferry! She is 85 and a bit of a legend, apparently bearing a strong resemblence to Dan's late grandma and had loads of interesting stories about that side of his family. Trish had booked lunch at a really posh cafe, think it was part of the Museum of Sydney and before we ordered she insisted it was their treat so order something really nice - didn't need telling twice! Lovely location and setting and had delicious food, a good change from Subway and McDonalds! ;o) Dan had lasagne (with no meat in it, shocking) and I had tiger prawn pasta with rocket pesto and cherry tomatoes, really good. Caught up with Trish and Kath for a good couple of hours before Trish had to return to work so we escorted Kath back to the ferry around 3. Spent the afternoon up the Oz Tower including a very overrated video and "ride" complete with lap restraints...don't quite know exactly why we needed restraining (maybe to stop us running out the theatre?!) but after watching a lot of places we had already been to we got the lift up to the top of the 260m tower to the observatory deck. Pretty good views over Sydney although the Opera House being so small was quite hidden unfortunately. Headed back to the hostel to write blog and upload photos (a fairly epic task as we had not done this since Brisbane) and went for Mc Donald's dinner and M and M cookies for dessert... what a change from lunch hehe. Dan watched some of the Australia Bahrain game before getting some sleep as was getting up at 5am to watch England Andorra in the 24hr pub opposite! I read and planned NZ as leaving for there on Friday and had no idea of a route yet! :o)
Dan did get up super early for the football (and left me sleeping thank god) before coming back at 7ish for a few more hours sleep. Got up and dressed and walked up to Circular Quay to get a ferry to Watson's Bay on the South siiiiide (as opposed to Manly on the North). Arrived there by midday and despite there not being a great deal to do, we walked up a big cliff and spied some nice scenery from the top including a lot of ocean - if you kept in that direction long enough you would reach Auckland! Headed back to the wharf and went to a restaurant there called Doyle's on the Beach where we had made a reservation. Of course on our budget this would ordinarily have been completely out of the question being an amazing seafood restaurant in a fabulous location but after rave reviews from Dan's Dad (and a generous donation!) we had made a booking a few weeks back and been looking forward to it ever since! Had a table inside (freeeeezing wind) but upstairs over looking the beach and boats moored up and of course in the distance the city skyline and Harbour Bridge peeking over the trees! Decided to go all out so after starters of garlic prawns for Dan and fresh calamari with lime and passionfruit coulis for me Dan had lobster mornay for main and I had fresh snapper fillets with parsnip mash, balsamic tomato something or other and potato crisps! Washed down with a bottle of Chablis and topped off with the most ridiculous dessert I have ever seen.... chocolate mousse cake, with a custard profiterole in the middle, topped with dark chocolate and white chocolate around the outside, covered in white chocolate and Baileys sauce and with peanut butter gelato on the side!!! I had peppermint tea :o( haha and a generous spoonful or several of Dan's pudding of course! Thoroughly unable to move we waddled back to the wharf and got the ferry back to Circular Quay before returning the hostel and chilling out, nappage and internet. Headed back out in the evening to the cinema on George Street just around the corner to see The Hangover, getting us in the mood for VEGAS! Packed and had cereal and leftovers for dinner lol before using up the remaining minutes on our Aussie phonecard and getting some sleep for a 4am wake up call...... flying to Christchurch!!!! :o)
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