Boxing day - minus the cold meat and piccalilli

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After the worst night's sleep ever (roomies returning from their partying every hour, on the hour, all night, and made only marginally entertaining by the arrival of one little Korean girl so paralytic she bounced off all the walls and got into bed fully clothed), I'm more than a bit relieved that I'm moving to Jesse and Heidi's place at North Bondi today. No more having to survive the all night thud of music from the pub below my hostel room and no more listening to snoring, drunken wails or the bathroom fan going on and off all night. No more having to cook in the kitchen that looks like it belongs in a squalid inner city squat. The hostel didn't kick up too much of a fuss at me checking out early either - I reckon I might not have been the first that week...

Still, I set off to have a day wandering round the city. My hostel isn't far from Darling Harbour so that seemed a fair place to start. Again, it made a lovely change to be able to walk around here without any rain! Walked over the foot bridge and past the Aquarium and WILD LIFE building, where Madame Tussauds will be appearing too in the not too distant. I'll wait for a rainy day before venturing in to use the last of my free tickets...

There are hundreds of restaurants and cafes lining the harbour, and a few sizeable yachts in prime moorings at the harbourside. I took a stroll through the shopping centre and then through Darling Quarter where there are water features aplenty, a kids' play park and entertainment area, and then the relative tranquility of the Chinese Garden at the far end. I stopped for my Boxing Day lunch - no piccalilli here, just sushi...

The boxing day sales start here today too so like yesterday, everything is open again - except today, it's bedlam. The queues at Westfield were extraordinary - I'd guess pushing a quarter of a mile long for Prada and Gucci alone, with the Swarovski store managing a queue that'd stretch around Burnham twice over. Prada I get, but Swarovski? Really?! Having barged through the madness, I made it to the Sydney Tower Eye to get a bird's eye view of the city. The 4d cinema experience was so different from last time - since Merlin took it over, it's changed from an outback cinema experience to a tour of Sydney from the sky, through the eyes of a parrot. Now, as anyone at Merlin will remember, I'm not such a fan of these 4d things involving the one thing that scares me more than anything else - birds. Having been carried out of the London Eye version after the seagull flew towards my face, and having suffered the endless ribbing afterwards, I was determined not to make a royal show of myself at the Sydney version. Fortunately the killer parrot decided to leave me alone and fly away from me rather than towards me, so fellow cinema-goers were saved from my sideshow...

At the observation deck, I got to walk round and see the whole city from above, and plan where's best to watch the fireworks on New Year's Eve. I also got to work out where Moore Park is, where I'm going tomorrow to watch some cricket. Handy. I also got to see the start of the Sydney to Hobart yacht race in all its glory, with the boats leaving the harbour and the leaders already at sea. Well-timed visit on my part.

And so I headed back to my hostel, packed my copious amounts of luggage up, found that some thieving charlatan had stolen my food in the scuzzy kitchen, and headed to Jesse's, my home until January 2nd. Am looking forward to living in civilisation again rather than with the great unwashed. It's going to be a very enjoyable week off from all those shenanigans, until I hit the road again...

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