Horrid overnight train journey to Sydney, touristly things and leaving Australia...

Let me start by saying that I will NEVER EVER take an over night train again in my entire life. I thought it would be 'fun' to travel back to Sydney via an overnight train. I thought it would be ok, as I booked a sleeper compartment for us, so we had beds, a shower and a loo and privacy. There was an all night buffet car. It was going to be fun and jolly and a real experience.

We boarded the train at half past seven in the evening. By half past nine I was kicking myslelf for not having booked a plane ticket. Buddy slept ok, he was out like a light, and slept all night. Little bugger. I must have got about a two hours sleep in total. The noise, and the rocking was horrible! Everytime we went round a right bend, I slid up the bed and whacked my head on the wall! I fell out of bed twice. I was very glad when the train pulled into Sydney at 7am. Unfortuanltley, we couldn't check into out hotel, so we dropped our bags off and headed out for breakfast.

We spent most of the day at Taronga Zoo. I am not usually a big fan of Zoos, I find they can be rather boring, but this one is brilliant. It was such a good day out, despite my tiredness!

We were staying in another studio apartment type hotel, the Medina Suites, right in Darling Harbour, so we had a great evening, going out to dinner, and watching a really, really good street entertainer. We had an absolute ball. Oh, and we went to Bill Grangers' (my fave telly chef!) resteraunt in Surrey Hills, where we tired his famous scrambled eggs, which I stole the recipe for, that was so cool.

Buddy really, really wanted to go on a tour of the Sydney opera house, so we did that as well, and he loved it. Once again we had the 'oh my god, a noisy child' looks from the other people on the tour, and once again he proved them all wrong by being quiet and interrested.

We have just hung out for the last few days, eating, shopping. We went up to the top of Sydney tower which was excellent, went to Lunar park, which was exhausting! We went to watch the street entertainer again on the saturday night, and this time Buddy was picked from the crowd to help with the act. He loved it, and was a total hit with the audience! He had a bit of a big head after that, but quite rightly so, he was really good! We hung out at the Rocks over the weekend, went to the observatory. We had sooooooo much fun, everyday I was getting more and more upset that we had to leave.

And now we do, and I really don't want to. I love everything about Australia.

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