The Arriving Week

The Flight

Chin Chin! Slam! We kicked off our travels with a black sambucca shot and a nice chilled pint whilst watching the champions league final in the airport bar.
We boarded the flight and got to our seats. To start with we thought we might have had the best seats in the plane- right at the front with all the leg room and the TV above us however as usual we'd already got something wrong and the plane hadn't even left the runway. We departed around 9pm. We were all very excited and even more impressed with freebies the flight contained, the TV's in the seats and of course- the free booze. First stop- Abu Dhabi.
After a few cheeky whiskey and cokes and a couple of beers we slept a lot of the 8hr flight and finally touched down at Abu Dhabi and view was just all desert around the airport. We was only there for about 3hrs (just enough time for a mooch about and a burger king for Jamie). It was then time to jump back for part 2- a 14hr haul to Sydney.
As excited as we were, as good as the entertainment was and as much drink as we wanted, this flight was endless! I kept nodding off, waking up thinking it must of past an hour or so but then finding out it had been 15mins at most. Jamie and I even resolved to a bit of chess! One thing though, we had plenty of room to sprawl out as the flight was only half full so we were allowed to seat practically anywhere so we got a full row each.
We arrived in the early morning around 6.30am local time I think and guess what... it was pouring it down! They say Australia has an average of 300days of sun- guess we was arriving on 1 of the 65 then.
Finally we arrived at the hostel in Bondi and it was around 8.30am. We couldn't get in our room till 11.30 so we just laid out on the sofa's in the communal room. When we was able to get in our room, we ending up sleeping till like 5.30pm as Emily had set her alarm wrong. We got some tea from the mini-supermarket next door and then more or less went to bed again but we did have a little walk around first.

The First Week

Due to the weather not being great I.e. raining, we couldn't manage to hit the famous Bondi beach. We did however manage to get out of the hostel and venture into Sydney centre. We also went for a day out at Fox studios one day where we had been old you could watch shows and film etc. however there was non of that or anything to do really so we caught a bus to circular quay to see the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. I was quite disappointed with the bridge. I'm not sure what I was expecting but it just looked like a normal bridge (the Humber's bigger). It didn't have that wow factor. The Opera House on the other hand is quite spectacular to look at. The shear size and design of the building is quite impressive.
On our last day Sydney the sun did shine slightly so we did go straight to Bondi beach thinking is would be the place to be but we was kinda the only people there for the sun as it was just people surfing or exercising along the shore.
The first week did have it's ups and downs. I was really excited and looking forward to what laid ahead. However on the other hand, it was a real eye opener, seeing how expensive everything was, especially food and accommodation. So after speaking to a few people we decided to re-think the time scale of our plan and we drew up a bit of a master plan which meant to travel the east coast and be back in Sydney again for Christmas/ New Year then it looked like we would have to head home after which would still be plenty of time to see and do everything we originally wanted to do. A lot of people seem to just come for 4-6months, do everything, then move on.