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G'day all you Bruces and Sheilas! We are in Sydney, it's so great here, I keep thinking to myself just how far from home we are! Sydney is such a perfect city, it's got pretty much everything you could want from a place. And even though the weather has been thoroughly rubbish for most of the time since we arrived, it's still such a wonderful place.
We arrived in Sydney after sod-all sleep at about 9.30 am, and got a bus to a backpacker's hostel where we had two beds booked. Didn't really know what to expect, but we were pretty shocked nonetheless: We were shown to a 10 bed dorm room in which only 2 beds were free, the rest being occupied by smelly sleeping people. Apparently most had been out drinking the night before, but still, the room was dirty and smelly with clothes strewn everywhere and there was barely an inch of floor space visible. And for this they were taking AUS$28 a night each off us (AUS $2.50 is about a pound). This was not what I'd been hoping for, and we quickly revised our plans of staying a week in this hostel to just 2 days.
We set off to explore, taking a route through the Botanical Gardens, which were stunning. It's quite an English style of park, so I was doubly amazed to see huge birds strutting around on the grass, looking kind of like pelicans with sharp curved beaks. Apparently they're called Ibises and they are everywhere, they look like they belong in a zoo. I also saw huge things flying overhead, which turned out to be bats. They were flying foxes, with wingspans at least 5ft, massive. Also spotted cockatoos flying around. You really feel like you're somewhere far removed from home when you see this kind of wildlife. We continued through the Gardens, and as we rounded a corner the Opera House came into view, quite a special moment, especially for me (Katie's seen it before of course). It's such a lovely area, like most of Sydney, almost as if the Opera House and the bay are part of the Gardens. A little behind the Opera House we could see the Harbour Bridge. We spent a while walking around and admiring the views, we walked through Circular Quay and on to Darling Harbour, a docklands kind of area with loads of new developments. Here we visited Sydney Aquarium, which was brilliant, highlight being the shark walk-thru tunnel which had proper sharks, the real scary kind and also the biggest sting ray I've ever seen (not that I've seen lots...) but probably 6 metres each way! With extremely sore feet (we had walked miles) we headed back to the hostel, where they had put on a $5 bbq and a beer, a most pleasing concept.
Saturday and the weather had turned, being very grey and miserable looking. We spent most of the day wandering around, particularly in The Rocks, the place where Sydney was founded. It's a nice district with lots of old houses, very close to the bridge. We had a picnic by the harbour, surrounded by lots of crazies and winos for some reason. More wandering around followed, but fed up with being rained on, we headed in. That night we cooked for the first time in 5 months, and it was de-lic-ious! Pan fried chicken breast with carrots and pasta, yummy. We'd been chatting to some guys in our room a lot, and it definitely improved the situation to have some nice people to talk to, but we had made up our minds to move, and we found a hostel down the road called Chilli Blue, who had four bed dorms for $20 per night, much better!
So the next morning we checked into our new hostel, which is far better, with only 2 bunk beds in our room, and it has a huge roof top terrace attached with views over the skyscrapers and harbour bridge - brilliant! The only moan is that most of the people who stay here are complete miserable so and sos, there's a common room with tv and a kitchen attached, and whenever we go in there's a few lads in there, all looking miserable as sin and ignoring each other. Even when we smile or say hi we don't get a response, with a couple of exceptions. Makes cooking with others pretty uncomfortable, as they seem determined not to say a word to us or anyone else. This morning we were watching tv with our breakfast and our programme was just ending. Some guy came in and plonked himself down, picked up the remote and changed the channel to Motorbike racing! Cheeky git! You can see what we're up against here. Thankfully a girl in our dorm, Emily, is lovely, and the other person, a middle aged English guy, isn't too bad, more annoying!
Sunday we didn't get up to much, just went out for a walk for 3 hours or so in the afternoon when there was a break in the rain. Monday was also pretty boring, had a sorting out day setting up a bank account and registering for Medicare (like NHS), and also bought some rubber thongs (flip flops). Yesterday we took a ferry across the harbour to Taronga Zoo. The ferry ride was only 10 minutes, but gave us some incredible views of the sights of Sydney. At the wharf we got on a cable-car to the top of the zoo, passing over all the animals on the way. The zoo was excellent, and as it's on a hill overlooking the whole bay with the city in the distance, the views were incredible. Quite a surreal experience to see elephants and giraffes with the Opera House in the background. The zoo was huge and took up most of the day.
Today we have been to Bondi Beach. One of those must-do things, it's something I've always assosciated with Australia since I can remember. The beach is actually really nice, and it's amusing to see all the gnarly-surfer types, there were loads of people surfing. It is a very surreal experience though to lie on a beach on the other side of the world and read in one of their national papers a story about an escaped bull in your hometown 12000 miles away! Obviously terrible for the poor guy that got gored, but very bizarre for us! Anyway, the weather had gone back to being gorgeous, but all of a sudden it clouded over and that was that. Big lightning storms in the distance put paid to our sunbathing, and soon we were getting drenched as we waited for the bus. Oh well.
We were only gonna stay here 5 days or so, but we've decided to stay for Mardi Gras on Saturday, which will be an experience. Planning to leave for Melbourne on Sunday, but not 100% on that yet. Sydney is just such a great place that we're in no hurry to leave, even though we know we'll be back again before we leave.
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