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Published: January 22nd 2008
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The Opera House at Night
As if you couldn't of guessed.... We arrived in Sydney at 10:15pm and after checking into our hostel decided to go for a bit of a walk around. We walked straight down to Circular Quay and saw the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge all lit up at night which was amazing.
The next day we asked reception if they had any work available and we got a job cleaning the kitchen at lunch time for free accomodation. It only takes 30 mins so its a bargin really! We spent our first day getting our bearings in the city and wondering around like proper tourists, pointing at things and taking pictures. The Harbour around the bridge and Opera House is really nice. There are quite a few parks that you can sit in and take in the views as well as different street performers.
The street performers we have seen have included a fire juggling, ginger bearded mad man, a sword swallowing, fire juggling bold man, a woman swinging far too many hoola hoops than should be possible to a guy who could fit himself through a squash racket, a tennis racket sideways and a toilet seat at the same time! We are close to
Darling Harbour so in the evening we like to take a stroll and take advantage of this cheap entertainment. They also have ice cream and chips there......
Of course the one thing that you HAVE to do when you come to Sydney is see the Opera House close up. It is even more impressive in real life than it is in a picture. WE could of filled up our entire memory card with different poses in front of it but we thought we would save a bit of space for Koalas and things for our nans to aww at. We did have a laugh trying to get pictures of us jumping in front, which took some practice due to the camera delay but we got there in the end. Next to the Opera House is the Botanic Gardens and we spent a day lazing under a tree. Kim picked the tree as she wanted to lie with her head in the shade and legs in the sun. Forgetting that the earth rotates, 5 minutes later her head was in the sun. She shuffled around to get her head in the shade..... 5 minutes later she was in the sun.
This went on for about 20 minutes before she realised the error of her ways and gave up and sat in the sun with a hat on. Bless her. How did she get that first on her quantum physics module?!
Thursday through to sundays there is a great market called "Paddy's Market". We went to pick up a few souveniers to send home and some lovely fruit and veg. Now this should of been an easy task apart from our run in with Kim's new arch nemesis, the 95 year old market stall lady. We went to buy a souvenier for $3 and gave her a $10 note. She waddled off and came back with a handfull of coins. Now you don't have to be a genius to work out we needed $7 change, so she handed Joe the coins. $3.30. Clearly something wasn't right so Kim pointed it out and she waddled back to get some more. We watched her slowly counting the money and she came back with some more coins. This time she came with 7 coins. Unfortunately they weren't dollar coins so we had about $3.90. Kim began to get frustrated and said "We gave
you $10 so we just need $7 change!" to which the little old mad lady counted the coins 1 by 1 in Joe's hand to make 7. Yes, 7 coins that added up to $3.90. Ok, so one last try to make her see sense and she waddled back and came back with 50 cents more. We were now really fed up so asked for our money back and she could have her souvenier back. She waddled angrily back to the till and slammed the note in Joe's hand saying it was our fault for not having the correct change! Madness!
We needed some relaxation to get over the market incident and so we went along to Cronulla to meet up with Ian who Kim worked with at Clarke Willmott. The beach at Cronulla is the longest beach in Sydney and was a great place to have a chilled out afternoon.
So our second week in Sydney began in typical British fashion, with rain..... So monday was pretty uneventful but Tuesday the sun was back in full force so we chilled out in Hyde Park and the Botanic Gardens. We walked up to Mrs Macquaries Point to get
a great shot of the Opera House with the Harboure Bridge in the background. Walking through the Botanic Gardens we heard some squeeking and looked up expecting to see some birds but it was in fact hundreds of bats hanging from the trees. Continuing our nature discovery walk we spotted a nice juicy spider almost the size of a hand!
That evening we went to the cinema as it was "Tight Arse Tuesday" meaning the tickets were half price. When we got back to our room we discovered we had a few guests and ended up drinking goon till the wee hours. The next day we got up and finished our cleaning early and headed off to Bondi beach. As you all know its a pretty famous beach, when we got off the bus the view really did justify its reputation. See for yourselves in the photo. We set up our towel and spent the afternoon on the beach. Joe had a great time riding the waves, still hasn't learnt to surf yet but did ok on his belly!
And then it rained..... and rained some more..... In fact it pretty much rained solidly for a week. So
our plans of checking out lots of beaches around Sydney went down the drain (with the water that was flowing down the streets like a river!) We spent the week trying to amuse ourselves and fill time. Unfortunately we did most of the city sightseeing in our first week, maybe we should have checked the weather.... We did have a brief spell of sun on Sunday afternoon and decided to walk across the Harbour Bridge. We did attempt this earlier in the week but the rain was so heavy we could barely see the bridge and took shelter in a coffee shop. We decided to treat ourselves and Kim was very excited when Joe came back with a tall pink glass of Ice mush (98% fat free!) Unfortunately Joe didnt put the lid on very well and when Kim went to pick it up the whole thing spilled all over the table. Kim now thinks Sydney is holding some sort of grudge against her. Joe's coffee was fine however. Getting back to the Bridge though there was an amazing view of the city and Harbour.
Then it rained some more but it did give us time to do lots
of planning for the rest of our trip. So on Thursday we are off to the Blue Mountains for a few days before heading up to Byron Bay at the weekend. We did enjoy Sydney but are a glad to be moving on as it is very expensive, especially when you are trying to entertain yourself in the rain.
We spent today in the Botanic Gardens, our last real day in Sydney as tomorrow we need to pack and sort out leaving etc. The sun did make an appearence for a few hours and hopefully we will find some more of it up the coast!
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Matt (false-alarm haha)
non-member comment
Heyyy joe, how you doing? Are you still in Sydney I just got here today...