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Published: April 11th 2008
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I just came back from Sydney, so I decided it was time for another update. I left for Sydney last week Wednesday, and stayed with Jimmy for 9 days. We did a lot of fun things, I saw heaps of stuff and met some really nice people! We first went to Darling Harbour, which is a beautiful harbour, especially with the amazing weather we had for the majority of the time I was there. We did the touristy stuff : we went to the Wildlife World to see snakes, kangaroos, koalas, etc.; we went to the Aquarium to see sharks, seals, and Finding Nemo fish; we went to see the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge (although the weather was not great that day). On one of the very nice, hot days, we went to Bondi beach, which was very nice! It had bright white sand, deep blue water and high waves like New Zealand beaches, but then with buildings around it and a lot of hip Sydney people. I did not take my camera to the beach, but I uploaded one picture (from Google, bad, I know) to give you an idea of what Bondi beach looks like. Jimmy and
I also booked a trip to the Blue Mountains, which was great: we were away for the whole day, saw kangaroos in the wild, hiked through a canyon for over 3 hours, and had some peaceful and quiet moments in nature, which was quite a relief after the crowded city. It’s rather impressive to realize that Sydney alone holds more people than the whole of New Zealand (over 4 million)! I liked the city though, it was very exciting and vibrant.
I was lucky enough to visit a real Sydney resident (Jimmy that is :P), so I could do some non-touristy stuff as well. We went out with his friends, and clubbing in Sydney was pretty cool (although we left a little early because we were all tired...). We also had a birthday dinner at Bungalow 8 (which happens to be the same name as a very exclusive club in New York), and we had dinner at a very good Greek restaurant with Jimmy’s friends (where the Greek owner tried to convince me to move to Greece to marry his son, when he heard that I could speak a little bit of Greek 😊 ). We also went to
Paddy's market, a large market in Sydney's chinatown where they have literally heaps of (mostly useless but funny) stuff. The last couple of days, Jimmy and I stayed at the villa of his Masters’ supervisor, because Jimmy would be house-sitting for two weeks. That was quite luxurious, a big house with sauna, swimming pool, etcetera... It was in a suburb of Sydney, Roseville, and to walk around there was a very different experience from walking in the city centre (where Jimmy lives). It was very green and quiet, except for the noise of the birds which were everywhere. Really cool to see all kinds of parrots and other big colourful birds flying around in the suburb!
After a very fun and relaxing holiday, unfortunately I had to get back to Dunedin and go back to working on my Masters thesis... Although they almost did not let me back into New Zealand! The morons from the NZ embassy who issued my visa apparently cannot write, which is why it seems to say “must not arrive after 30/02/2008” in my passport (whereas the 2 is actually a 7, I should not arrive after 30/07 because my visa is valid until 31/07).
It took me some time to convince the airport staff in Sydney that it was really a 7, and I had to walk with the desk employee to the manager, so that was quite annoying... And then when I arrived in NZ, customs again gave me a hard time over the stupid 7 that looks like a 2! :S Ah well, in the end I arrived safely, so unfortunately no excuse to continue my holiday in Sydney...
I probably won’t write a lot the coming weeks, for my blog that is, because I am going to need to write a lot for my thesis! I guess it’s time to finally start working a little harder on my thesis, after all this travelling, otherwise I’ll never finish on time... I am coming back to the Netherlands a little earlier as well, since there is a Psychology and Law conference in Maastricht at the beginning of July that I really don’t want to miss. So I’m arriving in the Netherlands on the 25th of June, and before that time I want to finish my thesis, so I better start working on it!
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Jimmy
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Hey, ik vond het ook erg leuk dat je op bezoek bent gekomen. Kun je me die laatste foto's nog een keer zippen en op de mail zetten? Doe maar naar mn gmail. Wat vervelend trouwens van dat gedoe met je visum. Maar is gelukkig nog goed gekomen. Anders had je weer terug kunnen komen ;-) Spreek je snel weer!