Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Nikki and Matt's World Tour
Our journey around south east Oz has come to an end with us back in sunny Sydney and meeting up with one of our journo friends, who has sacrificed life on the Andover Advertiser for a year of Down Under excitement (Hi Jo!).
But first, we ended up staying in Melbourne for a week or so, enjoying its charm and European feel.
The city's major export is, of course, Neighbours and I was quite keen to go to a pub night where you can meet the 'stars' close up. Unfortunately it clashed with happy hour at an Irish pub where pints of Guinness were only $4 (£1.60), so you can imagine which won out. Oh well, there's always next time!
We also spent an afternoon at Melbourne Aquarium seeing lots of colourful fish, sharks, jellyfish, stingrays, and various other monsters of the deep (RIP Steve Irwin). It was cool, and quite intriguing watching all these creatures swim around you.
From Melbourne we made the 12 hour bus journey to Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, and its nearest major city - which goes to show just how big this country is.
It's amazing to think about really. Adelaide's nearest city to the west is Perth, and to the north it is Alice Springs, with nothing but thousands of miles of desert in between. Blimey.
Anyway, Adelaide is quite a pleasant city surrounded by lots of parks. It was relaxing walking around (when the sun shone).
It also seems to be the sweet tooth capital of Australia. Just down the road from our hostel was a chocolate factory and we found a couple of pancake houses selling 'all you can eat' pancakes for $5 and sickly sweet marshmallow hot chocolates. One was 24-hour and a big sign declared: "This door will never close". Not sure how many customers they'd get on Christmas Day, but never mind.
One day we got a tram to the beach at Glenelg, about half an hour away. It is a cute little suburb full of cafes and second hand bookshops. The beach would have been nice too, if it wasn't raining.
We were also in town in time for the Royal Adelaide Show, so hopped back on the tram to have a look. It was very reminiscent of the Royal Show at home, full of prize cattle, pigs pens and alpaca arenas. The teenagers were all congregating in the fun fair section, but the rides made me feel sick just looking at them.
But here we bought the best purchase of the holiday - a bag for $5 (£2) containing Rolling Stone magazine, various samples of toiletries, and a day pass to a health spa.
Now we had no plans for the evening, so went along to the health club to see if they'd let us in. And they did. It was brilliant. We made full use of the pool, spa and sauna at this very posh club. Definitely the best $5 we've spent so far!
From Adelaide we made our way back to Sydney to meet up with Jo. It's been a great week as she's not only put us up in her little flat but shown us the sights of the city.
She lives in the posh eastern suburb of Double Bay and it is so fancy Nicole Kidman has a house around the corner (we did go past but there are huge fences so you can't see in!).
We've spent a few days enjoying the harbour views and bays, including getting the ferry over to Manly on the northern shore.
Back in the city we've also visited the Chinese Gardens at Darling Harbour, looked out over the water at the Harbour Bridge pylon viewpoint, and strolled around the botanical gardens.
Last night we even went to the Opera House to see The Tempest. It was a fantastic, walking up the steps of the famous structure and seeing a show. The play itself was good, but the experience in all was amazing. Before we went in we'd treated ourselves to a bottle of bubbly and sipped it as the sun set over the harbour. This is the life!
We're now half way through our trip. I can't quite believe it's September already, but hopefully there will be lots more excitement to come!
Till next time,
Lots of love,
Nikki
xxx
- comments