New Year in Sydney

After a not particuarly comfortable 12 hour bus ride from Melbourne with a crazy bus driver who insisted on repeating everything he said at least 3 times and constantly waking us up, we arrived at Sydney central at 5AM groggy and bleary eyed....(and probably a little but grumpy as well). Regardless of the fact we had just arrived in one of the world's most exciting cities we just wanted to sleep. Luckily we could check straight into our hostel as we had booked it for the previous night! We checked in and proceeded to the 6th floor to our room subsequently disturbing and waking up the other 4 guests in our 6 bed dorm room which was actually tiny and like a pig sty. The other 4 guests had managed to make quite a mess and it didn't smell too great in there either! Too tired to really care at that point we clambered into the only remaining beds (2 top bunks - nice!) and slep til mid afternoon!

Feeling much better after sleep and shower we set off down to Circular Quay to see the landmarks! We realised then that our hostel, despite the scummy room, was actually in a really great central location - a 15 minute walk down to harbour. We gawped and gazed at the Opera House and Harbour bridge for a while, took all the token pictures of them then realised it was beer o'clock so we treated ourselves to a drink one of the harbour bars - nice.

Day 2 in Sydney we had booked to do a boat tour round the harbour but when we got there we were told it wasn't running so instead we went for a coffee in the swanky rocks area just next to the harbour. The Rocks, the first point of disembarkment for all the convicts and British who arrived in Syndey, has actually got a very interesting history to it, as we discovered when we looked round the (free) history museum. After that we met up with Alex (my old neighbour from when I lived in Paris - she's Australian) and her boyfriend for lunch. It was great to catch up and we ended up going with her, her boyfriend and a few others to Newtown - Sydney's funky studentville. Leaving the boys in the pub for an hour the girls went for a look round the trendy, yet inexpensive shops. I didn't buy a new handbag. Well what can I say - it was a bargain! We ended up staying at the pub for pretty much the rest of the evening catching up, chatting, speaking French (yep you'd better believe it) and playing some interesting games of pool!! Great night!!!

The next day we forced ourselves to get up and make the most of the the day. We did our harbour trip which was cool and then headed round to Darling harbour, had a walk round there, saw all the skyscrapers and then went to Sydney Aquarium where we saw literally thousands and thousands of brightly coloured tropical fish! You really got your moneys worth! Paul was happy to see some Sharks there and I loved seeing the turtles the most!! Met up for a quick drink with Paul's old squash buddy Joe who was also in Sydney and also discovered the "Shark Hotel", home of $7 steaks! (about 3 quid 50)...and believe me that's bloody good in Sydney!

All too quickly it was new years eve! So we packed our cool bag (or esky as they call them here) with beer, goon (wine from a box) and burgers that we cooked especially and headed out to Rushcutters Bay - a vantage point for the fireworks that Joe had sussed out. We had heard that the vantage points were chaos on NYE but we didn't think it was too bad! We managed to get there and get a spot without any problem! We spent all afternoon lazing about in the roasting hot sun in the park (overlooking the harbour bridge) awaiting the main event! Actually, there seemed to be more Irish people there than Australians, but it was still a great atmosphere! It was worth the wait for the midnight fireworks - they were amazing. Certainly the best fireworks we've ever seen and the morning papers the next day were also claiming that they were some of the best ever! See for yourselves!!

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=P0zDkX5Bsh0&NR=1

We slept late on New Years day but decided we would treat ourselves to some food out as we had eaten home made spag bol for the past 3 nights! We also went up the Sydney tower which gave us panoramic views all over the city which was pretty cool. There was also an interactive look at the different aspects of aussie culture and highlights of some of Australia's most impressive places to visit. We went to the Shark hotel again for steaks, played some pretty competitive games of pool, drank red wine and somehow it was 5am and time to go home!! hmmm.

Our last full day in Sydney was spent at the famous Bondi beach. It was the first day it had been a bit cooler and cloudy but we headed to the beach anyway, having decided it was something we couldn't miss. We lay on the beach convincing ourselves the weather would improve but eventually we had to conceed that we were both cold and that it really wasn't a beach day. We had a wonder round Bondi town which was fairly cool but full of expensive surf shops with nice things that we couldn't afford. As it was our last evening in Sydney we treated ourselves to another $7 steak (unbeatable) and then went to meet some friends that we met in Thailand. It was cool to catch up with them again but we were a bit tired from our late night before and needed to pack as we had an early flight the next day.

Overall impression of Sydney: A cool if not slightly generic city (with the exception of the harbour), expensive but lots to do and lots of fun to be had!

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