Good Morning everyone, well its morning here and night time in England so I expect most of you are sound asleep, apart from Em, I know you are out for Mr T's Birthday...... Happy Birthday Mr T, you are officially OLD!!!!! haha, only kidding. Hope you all have a good night anyway! We are now in Byron BAy, which is a real;ly cute little surfers town up the East Coast. We left Sydney last night at 7pm, and arrived this morning at 9am. It was a long journey and Im not a big fan of coaches, I can never get comfortable on them!!!!!! Plus, there was this really strange woman who was freaking everyone out ( she smelt like fish, honestly, it was bizzare) and she kept going to the loo on the bus, which was right next to where Sam and I were sitting, and the smell was GROSS!!!!!! She was really odd and kept mumbling things to herself and everyone! I also saw a girl on the bus who I met on one of our first ferry journeys in Thailand, random. But...... what is even more random is this. On Friday, Sam and I went for a trip up to the Blue Mountains just outside of Sydney. It was a great day, and we even took our own little picnic ( we are trying to save on the pennies as we are both spending far too much! And Sam is here for another 11 months!!!!!!) it was really lovely, and we went up to different lookout points, the views accross the mountains really were beautiful. We went up to the top of some cliffs, they were sooooooooooooo high up and you could see right over the top of the valley, and Sam was going mad at me as I was getting pretty close to the edge, but it was safe, It just adds to the excitement!!!!! ;-) Some crazy people ( Ben I swear this would have been you) were sitting on the edge with their legs dangling over!!!!! The drop below was literally a vertical drop!!! What was also strange, was that if you looked over, you could see about 4 cars which had obviouskly crashed over the top, although it wasnt the sort of place you would crash, more like suicide, nice) and also bikes down there too!!!!!! Nice hey. So anyway, we drove right out into the mountains and saw some cool aboriginal carvings. Then we went to Scenic World which is where they have rides where you can go on either this crazy train, which is apparently the "steepest train in the world" and it really was!!!!!!! Lynda I felt your fear, and also the cable cars. So we went down to the bottom of the valley on the train, and it was so scary, it goes really slow down to the bottom but my gos is it steep!!!!! Its like Oblivion at Alton Towers, except its slow and so you feel like your actually going to fall out!!!! I almost lost my camera!!!! Good fun though. Oh and there was a woman in our tour group who was 90 and she with her daughtrer, and became the oldest person to go on the ride! She was great fun, and I swear she did more walking than I did. So ( this is the random bit), we had just got off this ride and were looking across at the Rainforest, which we were walking through to get back to the cable car to go up to the top, and I bump into a good school friend of mine, Duncan from Bourne. There was literally only 7 of us at the bottom, how strange. I also saw him in Florida when I was working over there! You can never escape Bourne!!!! So it was a great day and we got to see the most incredible views and scenery. We also went to the Olympic Village which was good to see, esp after doing so much research on it for my dissertation last year ( No I am not a geek but I was genuinely interested and was giving Sammy Jo all these little talks and facts, hehe) The place was HUGE!!!! On the way back, we took the water ferry back which was niceand some of the houses along the harbour are GORGEOUS!!!! We got to see where Delta Goodrem lives, the houses really are stunning. Not cheap too!!!!!!!! Then we sat by the Harbour bridge and watched the sun go down, and treated ourselves to a steak and a bottle of wine! It was such a great day. Friday night, we went out with David and the rest of his flat, as it was our last night, we were exhausted after our day of hiking, and had been up since 6am but we had a good night anyway. Went out drinking around Darling Harbour, some of the bars are great. It was funny though as between 4 of them who live in the flat we were staying with, they had only taken 1 key out with them, and the girl that had it had wandered off, so it got to 2am and Sam and I were shattered and ready for our beds, so we just made our way back and hoped that Amanda ( who had the 1 key) was at home, she was so we both got back and went to bedm but didnt hear David and the rest of the group ( they also had other guests staying so there was 9 of us staying in one tiny flat) coming back and buzzing us to get in, we must have all been fast asleep so they ended up having to climb up through the bathroom window!! It took them hours, oooops. Serves them right for foreggting their keys though I guess ;-) So all in all, we loved Sydney, itd such a great city, loads to see and do and the locals are all so lovely. I def want to go back, one day!!!!!! We are going to stay in Byron for maybe 4 days and then head up to Surfers Paradise and stay there perhaps 2 nights. Sam has booked herself into Surfing lessons tomorrow and Im going to sit on the beach and watch, hehe. I did enough of it in Geelong. We are also getting up at 5am tomorrow morning to go and watch the sun rise as its supposed to be beautiful at Byron! I love my sunrises and sunsets. Well best go as we need to check into our accommodation, we arent staying in a hostel, yipeeeeeeeeeeee, its a shared apartment, which should be ncie and it was only afew dollars more. Its full of backpackers, from everywhere and it all seems really nice. Prob just spend the day at the beach today and looking around the town Lots and lots of love to everybody. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx