Xmas and New Year in Sydney

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We arrived in Sydney at the 21st of December but decided not to drive in the city so we could sleep in the van. Jonas girlfriends arrived at the 22nd and we picked her up at the airport. I dropped them off at their hostel and then drove up to manly (as i found out that manly is the main beach for beach-volleyball in Sydney :P ). It was really crazy driving right through the city center without anyone looking at a map. I just had to drive along city and tried to find the way from my memory. It actually worked out pretty well but still crazy. Anyway after i got to manly it was time to play some beach volleyball. It was pretty much all i did in the next 3 days, so the first time i actually saw something of sydney was on xmas eve (after a nice swim and a few hrs of volleyball of course). It didn't feel like xmas at all as we had 30 degrees and i just came from the beach. We cooked a nice meal. We had a different kind of fish and prawns with vegetables and cheese sauce. Not as good as xmas dinner at home but still very good for us :P After some desert and some drinks I went out clubbing so it was a bit different to xmas at home.

I spend the time from the 24th to the 28th in a hostel. The weather got a bit rainy and colder (about 25 degrees) at the 25th so we didn't do that much and had some lazy days. At boxing day is the Sydney Hobart Race. We went to south head where you have a good view over the harbour and you can see the fleet going down the coast after they passed the south head. It would have been nicer with better as it was raining at some points of the day but it was still impressive to see all the boats in the harbor. 100 boats are in the fleet but there were thousands of others to go bring them out of the harbor. As the day wasn't the nicest we went in the aquarium afterwards. Not as good as the reef or seeing the sharks at Fraser island but still good.

The weather didn't get that much better till the 29th. As it got better it was time for beach volleyball and surfing again (and party). I stayed from the 30th to the 1st at a place i found over couchsurfing. The people where really nice and it was good to have a bed over new years. New years eve was a really good night well more day. We went to the sport from where we wanted to watch the fireworks at 12 o'clock, so we had 12 hrs for drinking playing cards and just having a good time. The firework were really impressive in the end. We could see 5 from the fireworks from our place, the harbour bridge and the opera house. It was just really great. The plan was to go out afterwards but i took us quite a while to get back to the city so we didn't in the end as we had a very long day anyway. I stayed another night in my van doing nothing really. The 3rd was the birthday from one of the guys i know from working so we went to his hostel for a small party and went out after that (not that different from all the other nights but still a good nigh). The last days i played some beach volleyball and been surfing in manly (and i get better slowly).

Yesterday we've been in the blue-mountains. It was a 2 hrs by train and really beautiful. It was good to get out of the city again and we had perfect weather. The eucalyptus trees a spaying a kind of oil in the air which looks blue and as it was a very clear day we could see it very good.
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I slept a few nights at a friends of Florian's flat now but she is has to leave today so i will go back to the van or check in a hostel again. We want to leave Sydney at Saturday and then travel south to Melbourne. We might pass Melbourne and go to the great ocean road straight away and then return to Melbourne. The way should take us a bit less then 2 weeks. After that i hope we can sell the van and i will go to New Zealand.

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