Palm Beach and Sydney

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We headed for Sydney not really knowing if we would stay for a few months or just a few days before going on to Melbourne to live and work for awhile. We decided to spend out last night in the campervan just north of Sydney near Palm Beach, where Home and Away is filmed. The next day before heading off to Sydney to drop back the camper we took a trip to the beach hoping to catch some filming, unfortunately there wasn't any filming that day which worked out well as Allen decided to pop the question!

We arrived in Sydney crossing the famous Harbour Bridge. To celebrate the big day Allen had booked the Four Seasons hotel to be home for the night instead of the hostel we had organised back up the coast. I wouldn't let him park the campervan outside the door of the hotel so we dropped that off first! Our room had probably one of the best views in Sydney, the Opera house one side and the Harbour Bridge on the other and after having spent the past month in a campervan this was such a treat! The next night we did have to come back down to earth and check into the hostel. At this stage we decided we would move onto Melbourne to live but still ended up staying in Sydney longer than intended as it’s a really great city with lots to do.

We took the city sightseeing tour getting all the history of the city and seriously tacky Bondi, but you gotta go there. Speaking of tacky we found ourselves in Scruffy Murphys pub a couple of times, its well know to backpackers in Sydney for its cheap $5 dinners and booze, "champagne" was $3!! On the other side of the scale we went to the Sydney Opera house for an opera one night, a really cool experience, sipping proper Champagne on the balcony of the Sydney Opera house at the interval. Granted we did have to crane our necks a little to see as our seats weren't exactly the $200 ones! Decided to admire the bridge from afar rather than climb it at $200 a go, did look cool though if you have the cash! The Sydney Gay Pride parade was on whilst we were there, so the city was full of colour for the parade and even more colourful people! We managed to squeeze into a reasonably decent place to watch the parade, which was pretty tame really, more political then Mardi Gras.

We also took a day trip to the Blue Mountains, a couple of hours from Sydney on the train. At the other end we meet up with a sightseeing bus which was part of the deal. It whisks you around the area to see the sights, very handy. The Blue Mountains are beautiful and you get to see them from all angles with glass bottom cable cars and the world’s steepest rail line running down to the valley floor.

Overall really enjoyed our time in Sydney, it’s just a nice city to wander around doing nothing in particular. I you get tired of the city you can take a short ferry ride to a different part of the harbour and be on a really nice beach in 20 minutes. After about a week in Sydney we decided it was time to head on again. Having heard there wasn't too much between Sydney and Melbourne we decided to fly. We cashed in our Qantas frequency flier points and got a cheap flight to Melbourne, not before meeting up with an old college friend living in Sydney, who gave us a good send off, thanks Quirky and remind me not to go on the sauce when you’ve a flight early the next morning!

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