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Salties, spiders, snakes, stingers, sharks and even shells tried, but none of them got us and we've made our escape to the instantly beautiful country of New Zealand! We spent our last week of Australia in Sydney, and it was a pretty awesome week. We'd opted for another overnight journey to Sydney, so it was 13 hours on the coach from 8pm Friday night to 9am Saturday morning. We slept intermittently, waking around 8.30 on the approach to Sydney. As we were looking out the window, we had this feeling of 'it's just like any other city, what's all the fuss about?'. Then the motorway swung to the right and the Opera House and Harbour Bridge appeared simultaneously. They both looked really impressive in the hazy morning sun and each of us started there and then to get pretty excited about where we were!
We checked into the hostel and rather than sleeping off the lack of rest from the bus we grabbed bacon rolls and a coffee in the café downstairs and went straight out to wander around since we were so excited. After spending the day just walking around and buying some clothes that were actually nice enough to wear out in Sydney, we headed out to meet with some folks we'd got to know early on in Oz on one of our tours. Some pizza and lots of beer followed so thanks to Katrina, Maria and Ben if you're reading! It was a good first day.
We woke the next morning to a phone call from some rather drunken friends in Belfast and our minds just about coped with their excited ramblings as we'd only made it in at about 3.30am so we weren't exactly 100% but was great speaking to you guys, bloody well took ya long enough though! Make sure it's not the only time too! We took about 3 more hours to get up and get ready and decided to go for an easy day walking around the aquarium. They have 3 'oceanariums', which are basically massive fish tanks with glass tunnels along the bottom and we imagined this would be a pretty serene Sunday afternoon for our fragile states. Though in our hazy states we'd forgotten it was the weekend and we tended to avoid these things at the weekend as there's kids everywhere, so our day turned out to be a bit of a loud, crowded effort, but the aquarium itself is pretty impressive. There's plenty of pretty cool fish but predictably enough the sharks, sea turtles and Finding Nemo characters stole most of our attention. The site of the aquarium is in Darling Harbour which is an area worth a visit if you're ever in Sydney, with bars, restaurants and shops aplenty, and the world's biggest IMAX cinema which we'll come back too...We barely moved that night apart from the addict making a big effort to walk 5 minutes down the road to the nearest bar to watch United City, well worth it!
We rose early the next morning intent on exploring the Circular Quay area with the opera house and harbour bridge. It was a bit of a walk from our hostel to the quay but you soon forget how tired you feel once you see the bridge. It's an amazing structure. Work began in 1924 and it was finished in 1932, just shy of 8 years to complete, and today there's 300 people employed on it for people who want to climb it etc. But I thought that was pretty impressive that 300 people have a regular income from a bridge. We didn't climb the bridge as it was a completely excessive price and way off our budget for just a couple of hours, but it's something to give us a reason to go back to Australia one day. Not that we need one, we're going again sometime, definitely. We did climb up through one of the towers on either side for a much more reasonable $9.50, which offered a good aspect on the bridge architecture and down on to the opera house on the opposite side of the quay. After a lunch at the observatory which also offers nice views, we turned our attention to the opera house. It's a strange building we have to say, but somehow it works. We took an insane amount of pictures of these 2 places, not just this day but everytime we walked passed, passed on a train, passed on a ferry, whenever. Once we'd run out of battery on our cameras we headed back for some dinner and to get some warm clothes for the chilly evening. We made our way down to Darling Harbour again, and hit the IMAX to see Star Trek. It was all very exciting! The screen is ridiculous. If you put both our houses side by side and then another 2 on top of them, that still would not be big enough. Well worth seeing it there because the scenes in space were spectacular.
Sydney has a very reputable zoo called Taronga Zoo so we had to visit and so we headed for it on Tuesday. We had to get a ferry from Circular Quay over to the zoo so this gave us another opportunity to get snap happy with the bridge and opera house! The ferries in Sydney are like buses and a public transport pass includes them as well as the buses and trains, which is another cool thing about this city, public transport on boats! The zoo was great, Claire fell in love with koalas all over again and I continued to believe I was a decent amateur photographer and tried to get cool photos. Don't know where this has come from but we've both been almost competing with each other to see who can take the coolest photos over the last few months! So if any of you think any in particular on the albums are great, let us know and this can further our arguments! We hit a wall that night and basically just lay around eating Tim-Tams. Can't believe this is possibly the first mention of Tim-Tams. These too have become a feature of our trip. Tim-Tams for anyone who doesn't know are by some distance the most enjoyable chocolate biscuit ever known to man, are available in a variety of flavours like original, dark, double coat, caramel and mint. They are something similar to penguin bars at home but just so much better. Definitely a new love for us. So if anyone knows of anywhere in Belfast, hell, anywhere on the island of Ireland selling them let us know so we can make monthly road trips to stock up once we're home! The daddys would love them!
Wednesday we set off for the famous Bondi Beach. What the hell is all the fuss about?! As Claire put it, 'its just Portrush with sunshine'! And seriously, the similarities are endless, this place just happens to be within the suburbs of one of the coolest cities in the world. We just weren't that fussed on it. It certainly didn't have the appeal of the beaches at Cape Tribulation or Whitehaven in the Whitsundays, but yeah, it could be a fun day out. Other than that, it's just like a seaside town within a city limits with great surf. We headed back into the city a bit after having a coffee and a paddle in the water and taking photos of some cool waves which actually looked a bit too rough to surf in, and got ourselves some more warm clothing in preparation for New Zealand. After some successful purchases including a cool pair of sunnies for Claire, we got all smarted up (well, as smart as you can look in jeans and a hoody cos that's all we have with us) and headed down to Circular Quay for a theatre night! We had opted to experience the opera house with a play which was a bit of new experience for both of us. So we went down early, had a dinner by the water then headed for more photos before taking in the show. We both enjoyed it which if we're honest really surprised us as we didn't know what to expect not being the theatre types but hey, maybe it's the start of something. Culture vultures? Probably not...maybe more like occasional observers!
United won again that night to go within a point of yet another title so we had a happy mood again the next day! We spent the morning sorting all our boring stuff out... like what laundry we need to do, what can we take on the plane and not, do we need to throw any shorts out since its gonna be freezing for the next 2 months and they take up valuable back pack room... that sort of stuff. When we set off we decided to head to the museum of contemporary art, not sure why, it baffled both of us! We then we took a picnic down to the Botanic gardens. It was a really nice sunny day so we decided (surprisingly enough!) that we'd go walk down past the opera house and bridge again. OK, we're not obsessed, we just hadn't been through the gardens to a place called Mrs Macquarie's Point yet, where you can get a view of the opera house and bridge in one photo, so we had to pass it, OK! We wandered back up through the opera house and stopped in at the more traditional art gallery on the way, but again, this didn't leave much of an impression. Maybe we just aren't artistic people! That night we were invited round to dinner with our hospitable hosts from Saturday so we met Katrina when she finished work to sample some $5 champagne cocktails, well she and Claire did. After 2 drinks we decided to leave before Claire fell over (HA!) and head to dinner. It was a really nice night so thanks again guys, really enjoyed hanging out with ya!
The following day was our last in Australia. We wanted to explore out around the suburbs a bit more, so we boarded a bus to a place called Coogee (good tip Katrina), and went on the coastal walk from there round to Bondi. If we're honest, this was a nice walk, but we've gotta say, nothing better than what our own north coast has. We've really begun to appreciate what amazing scenery Northern Ireland actually has while away, it's as nice as anything we've seen anywhere else really. That's not a criticism of Australia or anything, it's a beautiful country, just putting a bit of context on it, we've got one just as nice on our doorstep, just different. After the walk we headed back into town to visit the museum of Australia which was interesting but we didn't really leave ourselves with enough time to properly take it in.
And so, it was onto our last sunset in Australia and where better to spend than at, yip, you guessed it, the opera house and harbour bridge! We just weren't sure if we had enough photos yet! No really, we just wanted to see sunset down there. And it was well worth the final visit. The sun sets behind the bridge if you look out on it from the opera house so it was a nice place to watch it fade. After exhausting our cameras again we boarded a ferry to Darling Harbour which took us out passed the opera house and under the bridge to parts of the city we hadn't really seen but, of course, it was dark by then so we still haven't! We went for dinner in Darling Harbour and got an outside table at a restaurant along the water. The entertainment chiefs at the harbour had heard through the grapevine that it was our last night in Oz so they put on a firework display to send us on our way. What? Don't believe us? Well check out the photos once they're up!....... OK, seriously we knew the fireworks were on as part of Darling Harbour's 21st birthday celebrations so we'd planned dinner and the fireworks as a good way to wrap it all up!
After that it was off to bed early that night as we had to be up at 4am to head to our flight. We really loved Australia and we're determined to go back. 8 weeks flew past and really doesn't give time to even scratch the surface. The size of the country is incredible and there's so much to see and do, we have a list of things we didn't get to do that are must visits on our travel destination wish lists for the future, and even a few places we'd love to get back to again one day! Particularly diving on the reef again once we've become fully qualified divers - that's our next holiday.
So we're onto New Zealand now and if the views from the window on the approach to Christchurch are anything to go by this place is gonna be jaw-dropping! It's a big climate change for us, the forecasts are for 10-11 degrees for rest of this week and much chillier at night so we need to build up our warm clothes collection but we're so excited. Ahead should be skiing/snowboarding, hikes through Lord of the Rings scenery, a skydive or two and maybe even an All Blacks game if we're lucky! Look forward to writing about it!
Keep in touch guys, and if you haven't been in touch, give us a message!
Love Chris and Claire xx
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