Hello from Sydney!

After a swift but sad farewell to Nemo we jumped onto a plane to Sydney arriving late at night. The next day slightly refreshed we decided to take our own self-guided historical tour of Sydney. We headed to Circular Quay home to the world famous Sydney opera house and harbour bridge. However when we got there it was cool, cloudy and raining - can you believe it! (Well we couldn't anyway). We started off in an area known as the Rocks, where the first fleet of Europeans (British convicts and their guards) landed and set up the Sydney colony in the 1780's. Being a bit geeky we found this area and the museum rather interesting! For a bit of light relief we then headed over the water to Manly beach, on the north side of the harbour. It was a great ferry ride in itself, with great views of the opera house and the harbour bridge, and we saw dolphins right next to the ferry!! Over in Manly we visited the oddest place we had been to so far - the former quarantine station for ships entering Sydney where they treated cases of bubonic plague, smallpox and Spanish flu. It is also meant to be one of the most haunted places in Australia.

On Saturday we were back at the Rocks to visit the art market where we found the perfect didgeridoo (we have been looking since getting to Oz)! Unfortunately it cost 60 pounds to ship from the market, so we confidently took it off to the post office to get a good saving on shipping rates. Except we didn't. Apparently our didgeridoo was too long to post by them. This was rather irritating as we couldn't go back to the market. In the end it cost an arm and a leg to send, I won't say how much but it made 60 pounds seem very good value after all!

We consoled ourselves with a walk from Bondi beach (the home of the famous budgie smuggler speedos), watching the surfers on some very impressive waves, to Coogee beach. A lot of this was along National Park clifftops with views out to the Pacific. Sometimes you can spot whales but they didn't show up for us.

We followed this with more walking the next day, seeing the Opera House and Harbour Bridge up close, walking across from North to South after getting the ferry across the harbour. From there we walked on to Darling Harbour, where we had another expensive beer. You'll have noticed we still aren't going out much at all, we just can't afford it due to the high alcohol tax here! This was the only downside to visiting an otherwise fantastic city and great to see the Opera House up close after years of watching it on TV on New Year's eve.

Next up we decided to take a break from city life and head to the hills - or the Blue Mountains to be precise - more coming soon!

Love

David and Brenda

xxx