Trains, planes & automobiles

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Hello
We are still generally spending our time taking it easy. Lots of sitting around in parks / by the harbour watching the world go by getting tanned & more relaxed by the day. We moved hostels on Monday. We are now in a much bigger more commercial hostel which at the moment seems alot better. We are in shared dorms, currently sharing with two irish guys who seems nice guys & an English guy. I first started this blog on Wednesday & didn't have much to say about the english guy. Then on Friday me & James were talking about Farnham & it turns out he is from Guildford & works at the Spectrum. Stranger than that though he worked at Frimley Hall. He opened the Vital Spa & was there for three months apparently leaving in September 2005. He talks in a very monotone voice & has an unhealthy interest in football. His name is Matt (not Matt who is in all the brochures) I don't know if you remember him Dee or Nikki or possibly Louisa? Small World!!!

We went to Manly on Tuesday on the ferry. It is a lovely beach, depending on ferries this is where we may go on Christmas day. Lots of sand, beautiful sea & views. On Thursday we went & watched the Christmas tree lights being switched on, felt a bit more like Christmas with the grey skies still warm though. It doesn't seem to be the Christmas overload like it gets at home. Not many decorations up in shops/around the city. On Friday night we went to a market at the Rocks with live music it is a really nice area in the city with the oldest buildings in the city. Just had a very chilled out evening with a schooner. We went to the Museum of Sydney this week. Ended up going twice as was told the first time had plenty of time to look around before it closed. Which was obviously untrue as we had to go back a second time to finish it. It was interesting to see the history behind Sydney, James found the part of the musuem on the Watson's biscuit factory (who invented the Wagon Wheel) more interesting.

We have already visited Wagamama's for dinner & will probably do so a couple more times over the next week as we were given vouchers for free meals. Cheap/free meals determines where/what we currently eat at the moment. (Suz & Hayley - A number 44 is exactly the same on the other side of the world & they do Banana Katsu)

It is the Australian Pop Idol final on Sunday on the steps outside the Opera house. They have been setting it up all week think we may go and watch the fireworks on Sunday. So haven't yet done any of the major sights, we are going to spend a couple of days in the Blue Mountain & plan to go up the Sydney Tower & do a tour of the city over the next few weeks, we have got plenty of time so we are not in any hurry.

So we have the next stage of our traveling planned. We will depart Sydney on the 4th January, very sadly as we are both agreed we could very happily stay here for many more months. We then get a coach to Canberra after four days in Canberra we then get a coach & then a train to Melbourne. We will be there for a week and a half or so. In this time we plan to hire a car & drive up the Ocean Road & stay over somewhere. We will then fly to Adelaide, we considered a train but its only 10 dollars more & saved an additional 9 hours on the train. We will have a couple of days in Adelaide before getting on the Indian Pacific for a 40 hour train journey across to Perth. This may not be everyones cup of tea but we are seeing it as a bit of an adventure. I'm sure there will be times later in life that we would never consider it. We said that we wanted to spend the next year spending time together you can't get much closer to that than sat next to each other for 40 hours confined to a train carriage (umm.... as I write this it doesn't sound such a fab idea!). We then hope to get jobs in Perth & be there for a few months.

When I started this blog on Wednesday the weather was lovely & sunny. You will all be pleased to know it has gradually got worse over the past few days & is today pouring with rain. This is forecast until next Friday.

Hope everyone is well, thank you for your emails, its nice to hear news from home.

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