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Published: February 2nd 2008
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Christmas Eve
Circular Quay on Christmas Eve So slightly late but here's what we got up to at Christmas & New Year.
Christmas was very bizarre we just couldn't get our heads around hot weather & Christmas trees its definetly not the same as back home. To help get ourselves in the Christmas spirit we went to the Christmas Carols in the domain & like all things in Australia it ended with some fab fireworks. Any excuse & they are letting them off. A few Christmas songs got us feeling a bit more in the festive spirit.
Christmas eve, I finally convinced James to give the jet boat around the harbour a go, I was the one wanting to do it & ended up more scared than james who loved it. You end up speeding around the harbour, getting soaked doing 280 degree turns. Totally worth the money, not something we would normally spend Christmas eve doing.
We ended up in a hotel over Christmas due to lack of planning to find a hostel, which had stunning views of, well the railway! But its was okay & it wasn't a dorm which made a nice change. We went Christmas shopping, obviously a lot less to
Santa Hats
James really didn't want to wear that hat! buy this year & we did who could be more inventive with $10. I quickly was done & proceeded to go clothes & thong (flip flop) shopping however after an hour & a half James was still frantically shopping! We got some bits which we would normally have at home over Christmas, mainly smelly cheese to go with the port from the hunter valley, quality street & alcohol!
So were in Sydney for Christmas day, what do you expect, a nice sunny hot day? Not what we got, but a windy, overcast grey day. We swapped presents, didn't take long, made phone calls back home & then headed down to the Botanical Gardens for a picnic. We had a walk about & had some photos taken with the Opera House & Harbour Bridge.
We booked a table at Bondi Beach for dinner so in the afternoon headed over there. If it wasn't for that I don't think we would have bothered going as the weather was so miserable. The beach was very empty, mainly Brits like us who were going to say that they went to the beach on Christmas day, even if it was freezing. We went
for a walk along the beach & then headed for dinner.
The restaurant was fab, the service & food were v.good. We were a little worried as you obviously pay a premium for Christmas day but it was totally worth it. Not the typical Christmas day lunch, Prawns, mussels, steak & John Dory but all very nice. It was a totally different Christmas than back home, but we throughly enjoyed our "different" Christmas.
The weather on Boxing Day was back to normal with sun & blue skies. We went to watch the start of the Sydney to Hobart boat race. The ferries stopped running as the harbour was too busy so we made a dash to Mosman & raced up the nearest large hill to get a good view. Although we didn't see that actual start we saw all the boats going out through the heads. It was a spectacular sight with all the private boats going alongside the race boats.
The talk of Sydney for the past month had been the fireworks on NYE. Since we had been in Sydney really they had been constructing a frame on the side of the Harbour bridge in preparation.
We moved to stay at Cremorne point on the 30th December & when we arrived people had already left out bits & pieces marking there spot for the fireworks. We had already decided that spending 16 hours out in the sun marking our spot was not for us so we booked ourselves on a boat for the fireworks, why not you only do it once. As most of the nice boats are $300 + we booked to go on the good old Sydney ferries at remarkably less!
We headed over to the Quay in the afternoon to make sure we got there before they stopped running the ferries. It didn't seem much more busier that usual at this stage. We went & had a few drinks & Wag's for dinner before heading down to be close as possible to the Quay so there was no chance we would miss the ferry. Once the area is packed to capacity they basically shut the area. There were lots of Brits around & it was gradually getting packed. We got on the ferry & headed out just after 8pm we headed away from the Opera house side of the bridge for the
first set of fireworks at 9pm. There was lots of other boats already out & a nice party atmosphere. We seemed to have an ideal position to watch the fireworks, just seemed to be a little too close to a barge where they were going off from! We were amazed by the 9pm family fireworks so had no idea what the midnight ones were going to be like. A number of boats were decorated with lights spelling out significant dates or numbers as the theme was time of our lives. You then do a parade down the harbour. We were amazed by the number of private boats, hundreds were on the harbour. We then got an announcement that as we ran out of wine we were heading back to the quay to get some more. You kind of get what you pay for, the food parcel was a quiche, the band played bob the builder & we were drinking wine out a pint glasses as the queue for the bar was so long it was easier to by glasses & put them in pint glasses. It was totally worth it though. We got in position for the midnight fireworks, the
side we were on was facing away from the fireworks so we had to do a quick dash upstairs. The fireworks were amazing, we will try & put a video up on here cos the pictures on the tv never show the fireworks going off the buildings. We both think that watching the new years eve fireworks, from a boat on the Sydney harbour is a must do thing for everyone. We have already promised to come back & do it again on one of the posh boats!
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