Brisbane to Sydney

Hi all,

Yet again I've left it far to long between writing blogs. I'll try to write more frequent, shorter blogs from now on!

I'm down in Sydney now, and have been for about a week. It's a nice city but it's getting cold down here - it's only reaching 20 ish degrees and so shorts are long gone and the fleeces have come out!

Anyhow, I'll start back in Brisbane.
I did go to Australia Zoo in the end. It's pretty good, although I was expecting to see a lot more Crocodile action, there was a show - but the tigers were a lot better!
Also whilst in Brisbane I took a tour of the Castlemain XXXX factory, it was a good tour and you got some free drinks at the end. Including one of XXX - it's the only place you can buy it (it's great).

After leaving Brisbane I went down to Surfers Paradise, which is a very strange and tacky town a little bit like LA. It has it's own Hard Rock Cafe, theme parks (including seaworld!) and is home to a 4500 square metres arcade.
Whilst in Surfers I went to one of the themeparks (Dreamworld - it was ok but I wouldn't go again) and went on what was probably the most expensive pub crawl around.

After Surfers I went to Byron Bay, I liked Byron but it didn't live up to it's hype. It's really nice and has a great beach, but there are other beaches just as nice around. Whilst in Byron I took a tour to Nimbin, which is a town stuck in the 1970's, it's incredible and very very wierd with hippies everywhere! The tour guide took us to his friends house and 'jungle', in what was a crazy day. The only other thing of major note from Byron is that I ended up going out with some guys to celebrate one of thems birthday - it what was another weird day!

Then I went down to the less known Coffs Harbour, and I'm glad I did - it's probably my favourite town so far. It's too small for me to want to live there but is a great place. I moslty chilled in Coffs, doing a few local walks and spending time in town.

After coffs was the horrid 9 1/2 hour overnight bus down to Sydney, and my plan to go drinking to get me to sleep for the ride backfired when I didn't sleep much and ended up hungover!
There's a lot to see and do in Sydney and it's surrounding suburbs (Bondi, Coogee and Manly to name a few) So far i've done walks of the city and beaches, been to an AFL game (Sydney Swans Vs Essendon Bombers - it's a daft game, like catch with some goalposts), I did the Manly scenic walk, which was excellent - it was around 12-13 Kms along paths, sand and rocks with excellent views. To finish the evening in Manly I went to a bar in which you can sample some German beers, they were very good and I somehow ended up talking to a drunk hungarian guy who had been in Manly for 18 years!
Today I did a tour of the Blue Mountains, which again was excellent with views I can't describe. We took a 3 hour hike in and out of the 'grand canyon' and took a ride on the worlds steepest railway (which didn't sound too impressive until we saw it!).
Tommorow I do a tour of the Hunter Valley - it's a winery tour where i get to learn about, and more importantly taste some wines.

As per usual I've ran out of time on the internet. Hopefully I can get on here more often and not be so brief!

Regards, Marc

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