Sydney life

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Hello from Auckland. I had such a good time in Sydney that I totally failed to do any blogging. Managed to kick the cold very quickly, walk through all the remaining parks and gardens and then and get straight into sunbathing on Manly beach on the second day. Lots of nice sufers to look at and it was lovely and sunny - or at least it was when I fell asleep. I woke up several hours later to find it was raining and I was the only person on the beach. Jet lag is a nightmare!
Anyway, the next day I booked myself on a trip to the Blue Mountains to walk to the bottom of a canyon and back out. I had been hoping to see some wildlife and nice scenery. As you'll see from the pictures we saw lots - kanagaroos, big lizard things (can't remember what they were called) and various birds and parrots, but to top all that I also discovered the lesser spotted Scouser and the comedy northener (featured in picture brandishing beers). The lesser spotted Scouser was immediately identified by the fact that he'd turned up for the canyon 3 hour trek in his bright white "bobby dazzler" trainers and the fact that he was loudly declaring that it was "friggin hot here" . Comedy Northener was identified by the fact that he was the most hung over man I've ever seen in my life and spent most of the day visiting various toilets in the blue mountains and clutching his stomach in agony.
Having spent the day touring the mountains (including an hour long detour to collect the Scouser's bag after he had left it in a field of kanagaroos), we felt that we should sample the Sydney nightlife, as it was a Friday night. Debbie from Switzerland also joined us and we started off with a few leisurely drinks. For some strange reason a lot of bars didn't want to let us in. I can't think why they think flip flops, shorts and beach dresses are inappropriate attire, but for some reason, we found a lot of places wouldn't let us in. Anyway, the night went on til about 5am and the 19 year old gap year students who shared my dorm with me said the next day they were very impressed with the way I stealhtily tiptoed in and scaled the bunks, only slipping up once or twice onmy way in.
The next day was beach day, so we did Bondi beach and Manly beach. The surf looked amazing and I'm definitely going to go back to Sydney before China and try to learn to surf. Not sure it's going to be quite like snowboarding, but it can't be that hard.... (famous last words!)
On my last day in Syndey I went to Darling Harbour and went to this museum called the powerhouse museum. It was all about engineering and possibly the dullest museum ever, but then I discovered "the Kylie exhibition", where I was able to spend hours looking at all her spangly outfits and listening to her music. So much better than learning how a steam train works!

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