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Day 74, 75 -Sydney - Thursday 29th, Friday 30th December 2011
Today Adam woke really sad that he was missing one of his best mates wedding; Graham Brick is marring the beautiful Sarah Alexandra in the mighty Essex County! He misses all the boys but today his and my thoughts are with Graham & Sarah and we hope they have the most amazing day ever - can't wait to see the pictures!!
After a lazy morning, we met Nikki and Danny and walked to the Sydney sky tower. With queues of 1.5 hour each way, we decided to go back later and instead go walkabout in the Kings Cross area.
We walked through Woolloomooloo and into Kings Cross - this area is known as the seedier part of Sydney and is home to the red light district. The main street threw up the expected "gentleman" bars and fast food joints but around the side and back streets there were pretty, tree lined roads with Victorian style houses. We strolled around before deciding to try and find a famous pie shop that I'd read about. Only problem is I couldn't remember the name or the address - this made it a tad difficult and after 30 mins or so we gave up and headed back to the Westfield mall to eat before going up the tower.
The Westfield food mall is huge and it's an insult to even call it a food hall as it offers so many lovely places to eat. After doing 2 laps of indecision we settled for a Turkish place and had a veg plate and posh chicken kebab.
Once done, we walked up to the Sky Tower entrance - result, no queues! After watching an impressive 3D video we got into the lift to take us up. On the way our ears popped! It was packed up there but we managed to work our way around the view and take in the sights, the views were impressive but we were unsure if it was worth the $25 they charge for you to go up - luckily we'd bought a combined ticket for the Aquarium, the Wildlife place and the Tower for about £35 all in so we're not too bothered about the cost.
Back at our hostel we went to our room to find out we had new roomies, Scott and Rhona, who funnily enough are another couple from Scotland!! They seem friendly and are staying over the NY period so we're happy to be sharing again with chatty, normal people!
Friday came and so operation New Year's Eve went into action!! We (as in Danny, Nikki, Ad and I) have literally been planning the booze smuggling operation for days now and so today was the day when we put all the planning to the test! The plan for NY is to head to Mrs Macquires Point, however you are not allowed to take our own alcohol and bag searching is in place. They are so strict that they won't even let you take unsealed bottles in!! So with this in mind we had been planning for day's ingenious ways to get the booze in undetected. Ah the life of a traveller!
Come lunchtime we met at the supermarket and started our shop for food and drink for NY. We loaded up on lots of lovely food including cheeses, pates, salads, fresh breads, dips, ham, olives, biscuits, mince pies - it was going to be a feast to remember. With the food and alcohol bought we walked back to our hostel to start the hiding of drink operation. With military precision, we boiled the tops off juice bottles (so they came off with the seal hence it looking like they hadn't been opened) and replaced it with 2 litres of rose wine - yes 2 litres! Next up was the vodka - we washed out an old sunscreen bottle and replaced the contents with neat vodka (genius!), then filled a cardboard carton with neat vodka and hid it in a pringles can and finally got a pack of toddler pops (like juice pops) and half-filled them with vodka mixed with apple juice. It was the work of professionals and once everything was hidden we sat down with a cuppa and proudly boasted of our drink smuggling ideas - let's hope all the work is worthwhile and the security doesn't find it tomorrow!
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