Ok, so this is sydney! Arrived relatively late on sunday night at the hostel - 790 on george. huge hostel but thankfully no spiders and relatively clean. Woke up on monday to a reasonable day - quite warm and humid - so walked down to the harbour and mooched about the Rocks area which is the oldest area in sydney and quite nice. We both decided we arent city people! far too much traffic and people rushing around trying to get somewhere so it was a bit of a shock to the system after NZ. plus got caught in a thunder storm and got soaked!

Monday night we met up with vic's step brother Mark for dinner - pizza! Duck pizza - and lamb and couscous pizza ! truly bizarre but very good pizzas. Was really nice meeting him as not met him - he has been working here for nearly 2 years and loves it. His mate Toby from guildford turned up for a couple of jars and a chat and he was a really funny guy. very wry sense of humour but very much so into asian women (he is off to singaore at xmas prob to buy himself a TingTong) and once had a twisted testicle - which was nice! never met a toby before - i think his surname was rather unfortunate like timtwit or something.

Tuesday was bright hot and sunny after mondays rain so got the ferry from Circular Quay (which is disappointingly more of an oblong) to Tarroonga Zoo and spent the day looking at animals in cages! actually it is quite a good zoo and the keepers clearly love their work and were quite informative.

Wednesday was dull an muggy so decided to get the train from central stn to katoomba to see the blue mountains. The journey was 2 hrs but we were kept entertained by a german guy and 2 iranians who talked rubbish the whole way! think there was some sort of conference they were attending cos they had to do some dissertation and the guy was talking absolute twaddle and using formulas. it was quite bizarre.

then got the blue mountains explorer bus which was a hop on hop off which reminded us of barcelona - jill and kath! - and was terrifically complicated. the bus driver kept barking orders at us like "turn to page 14 of your booklets and see where we are and were we are going, now Page 29 which relates to stop number 12a which is the chocolate factory 9(a shed) - now back to page 14 and also have open page 3 cos you wont get anywhere without fully understanding page 3 - look to the right now and you will see ....nothing!"

It was very complicated and we did get kinda lost but you know it was very pretty and nice but it was the same scene but slightly different each time.

the 3 sisters were ok tho - apparently it is an aboriginal legend that these 3 sisters (no!) fell in love with 3 guys from a neighboring tribe but couldnt marry them cos they were at war with each other so the clever man (just wait) decided it would be a great idea to turn them to stone until the war was over when he would restore them.

Unfortunately for them he wasnt all that clever (see!) cos he got himself killed and there we are then, or thats there then depending on whether you are welsh or jill!

Anyway lost the plot with the bus driver when he started talking about a concrete path that meets a gravel path which i can only assume was as stunningly beautiful as where the tasman sea meets the southern pacific oceon. We will never know cos we caught the train back!

Today we are at collaroy beach YHA and the weather is a bit grim. grrrrrrrrrr.

Anyway, catch you later - hope this isnt boring you!

Sxxx

PS if the typing and spelling is rubbish its down to the keyboard ok ????