SYDNEY!!

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We really liked Sydney and stayed 4 nights here as our final destination in Australia. In fact Amy liked it so much she rated it as her favourite place on the whole trip so far - so it was good timing that she had her 23rd birthday there.

We stayed in 'Kings Cross', slightly to the east of the city, and supposedly the red light district of Sydney. But we only saw two or three 'suspicious characters' and on the whole it was a good location with a cheap hostel which gave us loads of free stuff - such as sweetie vouchers and free calls to the UK!

On Amy's birthday we covered the main tourist things to see during the day, such as the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. It was quite surreal to see the Opera House in real life. We walked right up to it and peered inside, being very tempted to hang around for an actual opera showing.

In the evening, we went to Darling Harbour (a really posh and pretty area with lots of bars and restaurants where we spent a lot of our time milling around during our stay) to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D at Sydney's famous Imax theatre - supposedly the biggest cinema screen in the world. Unfortunately they only had salted popcorn, which put a bit of a dampener on Amy's evening... luckily the film made up for it!

Over our last couple of days, we visited several museums and art gallerys across Sydney which were free and wandered around different areas of the city. There was a great atmosphere about the place, and with the sun shining we were sad to leave as we left for the airport for our flight to New Zealand.

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