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We had a quick stop in Newcastle to see my friend Kate and also for Clare to take pictures of all the road signs. If you don't know, Clare is from Newcastle in England so seeing signs for places she knokws at home got her very excited!!!!
We got an overnight bus down from Byron Bay and arrived in Newcastle at 7.30am. I had not managed to get much sleep at all on the bus so it was going to be a test as to whether I could stay awake all day. We were staying in the YHA just around the corner from the bus station but as we arrived so early we couldn't check-in yet so we had to store our bags. I grabbed a quick shower (sitting on a bus for over 10 hours makes you feel a bit grubby) then put my bag in storage then Kate and Clayton arrived. If you don't know, Kate is from Australia and she did a semester at Leeds when I was in 1st year and lived in halls with me, hence how we became friends.
The first port of call of the day was to get some breakfast so we popped into a cafe round the corner and I had poached egg on toast with baked beans, which were actually kidney and butter beans in chopped tomotoes (although they were probably alot healthier than real baked beans I was very disappointed as they just weren't baked beans as we all know them!). After our energy fuelling breakfast we headed off in Clayton's Suzuki Jeep. He even took the roof off for us. Suffice to say, Clare and I looked like we had been dragged through a hedge backwards when we got out of the car.
Our first tourist visit of the day was for a swim in Merewater Baths which is like a swimming pool at the side of the sea. It was pretty chilly so we didn't spend too long in there but it did enough to keep me awake for a while longer! We then headed off in the Jeep bound for Hunter Valley. On the way it started to raing so Clayton had to go through the 100 minutes process of getting the roof back on and then we were back on our way (it then stopped raining and didn't rain for the rest of the day but sod's law if we had taken the roof off again it would have bucketed it down!) We visited a few vineyards and had a few tasters and went to a cheese shop too where the cheese was really yummy but also really expensive so we tasted it then hastily left.
We then popped into a supermarket on our way back to Newcastle to pick up some food for our picnic that we were going to have in the park. During the summer they put films on at the park on a Saturday night and we were there for the last Saturday that they were doing it. We watched Disney's Ratatouille under the stars with our picnic. It was great fun and the film was good too but not a Disney Classic!!!!!
We were all pretty tired after our action packed day (and a night with no sleep for me) so we were boring and said our goodbyes then headed off to bed ready to get up to catch our bus to Sydney early the next morning.
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