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Published: October 10th 2006
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Well I left England on the 2nd October after being chauffeured to Heathrow airport via a service station for potentially my last Ginsters for 6 months. Just after passing through security Nic called me to tell me he had my birthday (please note my birthday is on the 28th of July) present and had forgotten to give it to me but cheers anyway guys! After that I boarded my flight destined for Sydney via Hong Kong.
21 hours later I arrived at Sydney International at 6.30am on the 4th of October and was greeted by Becky. We immediately headed for the hostel for breakfast and sleep. After about 1 hour sleep Becky then proceeded to drag me with her friend Sarah on a guided tour of ALL of Sydney. We walked through the Botanical gardens where I caught my first glimpse of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge and back through the gardens to find the colony of resident fruit bats. There we stood for hours trying to catch on camera one of these furry fellows in mid flight.
After finally succeeding we headed to Circular Quay to meet a friend of Sarah’s for a drink as it was
Sarah’s last night, sadly her friend had no money as she had not yet been paid so Sarah said her goodbyes and abandoned her “friend” penniless and alone on the streets of Sydney. Meanwhile we boarded a ferry to Darling Harbour for dinner. Like typical backpackers we chose to eat in a Swanky expensive fish restaurant on the harbour front and all ended up having Kangaroo steaks, which were surprisingly good. After the consumption of much wine (mainly due to toasting Sarah’s poor “friend”), tiredness got the better of me and so we headed back to the hostel.
The hostel we are staying in is huge and sleeps 500 people although we have a room to ourselves with a TV. You get given a key card which basically you need to access everything from the lifts to the toilets (which annoyingly has a light which goes off mid-dump, meaning I can never finish a chapter in my book and have to guess when I have done enough “wiping”).
The next day I was promised an easier restful day to enable me to adjust to the time difference (9 hours ahead) so we started our day at 7.00 am
and after breakfast walked to the AMP Tower. This involved getting a lift to the top of the highest building in the Southern Hemisphere to admire the 360 degree panoramic views. Due to my fear of heights Becky provided me with a herbal concoction (Rescue Remedy) to ease my fear and let me enjoy this wonderful experience. This worked wonders on me and I experienced no fear whatsoever, well until I got out of the lift saw the view, realized exactly how much “wiping’ was required and got straight back in the lift to the safety of ground level.
After leaving the Tower we headed to the Aquarium, here we saw some fish (and a Duck Billed Platypus)
We then went to Sydney Wildlife Centre where I ended up helping out at the stick insect display as the staff were too short to unlock the cage or reach the insects inside. After this easy day I crashed back at the hostel at about 7pm after travelling back on the monorail and slept for apprroximately 14 hours.
Friday we visited the Australian National Museum and learnt all about Aboriginal history, pottered round the shops and went to the
I-MAX to see the Ant Bully in 3D (It was the only thing on, but secretly I enjoyed it).
Saturday we caught the ferry to Taronga Zoo and spent the day there. We then headed back to the wharf where we missed our ferry and so became stowaways on some other company’s ferry with no inclination of buying another ticket (Also we had no money). Luckily when we got to the other end we just played dumb (I left that bit to Becky) and fortunately got away with it as eventually Becks bored the attendant into submission. We then headed off in the wrong direction towards Chinatown for a Chinese and ended up in a fish restaurant in the Rocks. Following our exertions we were too tired to walk home so we went to the bus station and got a train home as we could not fathom the bus timetables out.
Sunday we decided to have a lazy day and get an all day pass on the tram. Our first stop was Sydney fish market which is the second largest fish market in the World; here we had lobster, king prawns and salmon for lunch, the best meal
so far! After this we decided to go and sit in the park and just relax, read and generally chill out. However after about an hour of relaxing and watching a local game of rugby, without any warning whatsoever a mini hurricane shattered this tranquil scene and so we beat a hasty retreat back to the tram.
Our next stop was Star City where we chanced our arm at a roulette table and without entirely knowing what we were doing we managed to win $200. With our winnings we decided to hit the shops and then to go for a nice meal in the trendy (according to the Lonely Planet) town of Glebe. We got off the tram, walked around for a bit in the dark, found nothing so got back on the tram and went to Chinatown.
Anyway loving Sydney so far, weather has been good and a heat wave is expected next week. Will write again soon. Byeeeeeeee
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