Yay we're finally in Australiaaaa!!!! This has been Katie's dream place to visit for years and we're finally here! We got a free shuttle bus from the airport to our hostel in Sydney: Nomads. The hostel wasn't much to look at but they redeemed themselves when they gave us our first free upgrade! We went from an 8-bed dorm to a 4-bed dorm, which probably doubled the amount of sleep we got over the few days we were there! After dumping our stuff in our room we thought we'd have a little wander around the area we were in and maybe find a supermarket to stock up on food for the next few days. We only planned to be out around half an hour, but we managed to get ourselves lost, something we've become very good at! We were glad in the end though, as after 2 hours of walking around we found ourselves at the famous harbour looking at the Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge! It was completely accidental as our hostel ended up being around a half hour walk away, but by this time it was dark and we got great views as we walked down the waterfront admiring the menus of all the expensive restaurants down there! We eventually made it back to our hostel and went to bed very tired! The following morning we spent booking all our accommodation and buses for Australia so that it was all sorted. We were going to go to Bondi beach with the hostel in the afternoon and have a barbecue down there but we were too late by the time we'd finished booking everything, so we did a free walking tour of Sydney instead! We'd already seen the main attractions of course but there was lots we hadn't seen, and it was nice to see the bridge and opera house in the daylight. Our guide was really good and told us lots of stories about the city and it's history, so we went back to the hostel feeling very knowledgeable! It was interesting to hear how many of the important buildings had been designed and essentially funded by the criminals who had first settled there, like the big,grand hospital. That evening we headed out to see what Sydney was like at night. We read through our guidebooks and saw a bar called Mojo in it that looked good so that's where we went! It was a really nice little bar, the walls were covered with band memorabilia and the barman chatted to us for ages advising us of what we should do in Sydney while we were there, he even gave us free snacks! Unfortunately the extortionate cost of alcohol in Sydney meant we could only afford to go to one bar, but we made our drinks last a reeeealllly long time! The next day we got up early and headed to Paddy's Markets where we got a few cheap bits and bobs, including an umbrella as once again we had constant torrential rain. We were going to go to Bondi (again) but thought we'd give it another day and see what the weather was like. After Paddy's Markets we walked to Darling Harbour. A modern tourist area, quite nice, it's where the aquarium etc is but not many places look really nice when it's raining so much! We imagined that in the sun it would look really nice though! However there's only so many times you can look around waiting for it to stop raining before you give up, so we decided to take a walk over Sydney Harbour Bridge to Luna Park, a permanent fair just across the bridge. Unfortunately we walked all the way across the bridge and the park was closed! Walking across the bridge is a must do though so we didn't regret it, and by this time we were pretty hungry so we had some food to give us enough energy to make the long walk back to our hostel. We had gotten so wet we jumped straight in the shower and hung all our clothes out and decided to stay in as we were tired from all the walking and really didn't want to go out again in the never ending rain! The next day we finally made our trip to Bondi even though it was STILL raining! We caught a bus and walked around a bit before doing the famous Bondi to Bronte walk, but we ended up walking in the heaviest rain we had ever seen, and that's a lot coming from Brits!! We were soaking but Bondi was one of the things we had to see while we were in Sydney! We were miserable as Australia is known so much for its good weather and it was worse than UK weather, but thankfully we had an amazing night to cheer us up! Over the few days we'd been in Sydney we had been on the lookout for the nicest place to have a cocktail, and eventually we found just the place! Thanks to Keith back in Chepstow, we had the 2 most expensive cocktails in Sydney's nicest bar: the O bar at the top of Australia Square Tower! We got all dressed up and thankfully the rain stopped for half an hour while we walked down there, then we headed to the top of the tower to the ultra stylish revolving bar up there. It was such a lovely night, we had fantastic views of the whole of Sydney while sipping delicious cocktails and we loved it! It was so good after all the scrimping and saving, so thanks Keith!! The next day was our last day in Sydney so we did another thing everyone had recommended: a trip to the Blue Mountains. It was a 2 hour train ride away then we bought a hop-on-hop-off bus ticket to take us around the main sights. We got great views of the mountains and did a couple of walks but we sacrificed the last stop for a delicious cookie and scone as the weather still wasn't great before the train ride back. That evening we had an overnight bus booked for 11pm, so to fill the time we wandered the streets of Chinatown in search of a cheap meal as we had checked out of our hostel. We had a delicious (and huge!) sweet and sour chicken then stopped to listen to some street music. A guy was playing a Chinese violin accompanied by a woman on a recorder, the sound was so nice we could have stayed there all evening. We thought Sydney was a beautiful city to stay in and we'll miss it. We'd love to come back when the weather is better though!!