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Published: January 12th 2009
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The past few days in Sydney have been jammed packed. I was feeling ridiculously homesick the last time I wrote and didn't want to let it get me down so made a conscious effort to keep myself busy. My friend Jenna lives out here so took some time off work to show me around. The first day we visited Palm Beach aka Summer Bay where Home & Away is filmed. It's not usually the sort of thing I would think of doing, but I was up for anything which would involve getting out of the city for a while. When we got there I was surprisingly excited. I haven't watched Home & Away for years, but was like a giddy school child when I saw the surf club. They had a kiosk there with a sign saying 'Owner: A.Stewart' (as in Alf Stewart for those who are drawing a blank). It was a pretty cool. The rest of the day we doubled back towards the city and stopped at a few beaches along the way. It was the shame the weather wasn't up to scratch. The final stop was Manly beach. It was stupidly busy, which put me off so we
didn't stay too long.
Saturday we went on a road trip to Jamberoo; a water park just over 2 hours out of the city. Again, it's different than anything I would have chosen to do whilst traveling, but it was a good laugh. That evening the Sydney Festival started in Hyde Park. It's a free event so I wanted to check it out, but all I saw were hundreds of people getting drunk and having fights. Police were all over the place breaking up fights. Not exactly what I expected, so I ended up hanging out with one of my roomies (Clare) from London back at the hostel.
Sunday Jenna and her friend Jackie picked me up early and we went for breakfast at 'Pancakes on the Rocks' at The Rocks by Sydney Harbour. The food was friggin amazing and extremely filling. I could hardly breath after eating all that food, but we tried to walk it off around The Rocks Sunday market. It was full of arts and crafts, clothes, food etc... It reminded me a lot of Portebello Road in London. After a couple of hours we headed out of the city again to Watson's Bay
where there is a beautiful viewpoint of Sydney Harbour. Absolutely spectacular, but once you've taken a couple of photos there's nothing much else to do. We soon drove straight back into the City to visit the Fish Markets by Darling Harbour; this was my only request of the weekend. We were there long enough for me to eat a couple dozen oysters and then were on the way back to my hostel to call it a day. It was a relatively quiet evening. Clare and I just went out to Bondi Junction to meet her friend for a couple of drinks and then headed back 'home'.
I was up early this morning to meet Jenna for our final day 'tour' before she goes back to work. We hit the road making our way to Katoomba, The Blue Mountains. Throughout the day we visited various viewpoints including the most famous, Echo Point and climbed a ridiculous amount of steps. The highlight for me was seeing 'The Three Sisters' and descending and climbing the 'Giant stairway'. Going down wasn't so bad at all, but the climb was so ridiculously steep I thought I was going to pass out at one point.
Jenna and I stopped for food on the way back and I was back in my room by 5pm. After throwing my bags on the floor I just dived on my bunk and slept until I was woken by my roomies. We have plans to go out tonight to watch the crab races at Scubar. Should be a good laugh. I shall be sure to take photos.
Tomorrow is my last day in Sydney before I catch an early morning flight on Wednesday to Melbourne where I'll be staying with friends (Leanne and Karen) who I met in Vietnam. I'm not sure how long I'll stay in Melbourne for, but I'm hoping to catch the Australian Open out there. It's strange how much I'm looking forward to getting out of Sydney. I've seen pretty much everything there is to see....I think.
xx
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