Sydney adventures!

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We left Brisbane on Tuesday morning at 11:40am. We got a taxi to the airport and once we had found our gate, we settled in and watched the planes taking off and landing. We got on the plane and found that we had three seats between the two of us which was nice! The flight took just over an hour and when we landed in Sydney it only took a couple of minutes to taxi to our stand. We got off the plane and made our way to the train station where we got tickets to Central station. There was a train waiting in the platform which we had to run to get and we made it on just in time.

When we got off the train at Central station, it was about a five minute walk to the hostel. We checked in and dumped our bags in our room. We then set off towards Circular Quay at the other end of the city! We walked for about 50 minutes until we got to Circular Quay. We saw the Aurora there, which we had seen in Brisbane a couple of days before!

After having some lunch beside Aurora, we walked around the quay to the Sydney Opera House. We took some photos of the opera house and the bridge and also met a couple who were originally from Swindon but had lived in Sydney for 10 years! After looking in a couple of shops, we headed to the railway station and got on a train back to central station.

We got some drink and a magazine from the 7-11 and then went back to the hostel for the night.

On Wednesday morning we woke up at 7:30 and got ready to go out. We walked to the other youth hostel, which wasn't far from ours and waited for the bus to arrive. It turned up about 10 minutes late. We got on and had to sit in the back seats as all the rest of them were full.

On our way out to the Blue mountains, we stopped in a park near a river and had biscuits and drinks. We also had a banana each which we had brought with us. After a quick stop at the park, we went through the olympic park where, you guessed it... The olympics were held in 2000. It was quite interesting. We then went along the great western highway towards the blue mountains. We stopped in the mountains at a clearing where there was a mob of wild kangaroos. There were 2 mummy kangaroos, three joeys and a daddy kangaroo. We also saw some kookaburras.

We then went to another stop which was a viewpoint. We looked out and all we could see was cloud. It was so misty and cloudy that we could see absolutely nothing! After taking photos of cloud, we went to another viewpoint from which we were meant to be able to see a waterfall. We walked down 230 steps and all we could see was a small bit of the bottom of the waterfall and some trees. We walked back up all of the steps and got back onto the coach. We then drove a little way to the town of Leura where we bought a pie each for lunch which was delicious!

After lunch we drove to a place called Scenic World. We got off the coach there and first went across on the skyway Which was basically a greenhouse suspended on wires hanging around 600 metres above the valley floor. We went across the valley in the skyway and when we got to the other side, our tour guide was there to meet us. We then headed towards the "scent railway" which, Lauren votes should be called the Terror railway! We sat in the train and at the top of the track you are leaning backwards in your seat. The train then set off down a hillside/clifface at an angle of 52 degrees at it's steepest point. We were in the second row back from the front of the train. It was the most terrifying thing that I have ever done, but Chris found it fun! At the bottom of the track we got off the train (Lauren with wobbly legs and wanting to cry!) and walked along the scenic boardwalk. We saw the entrance to an old coal mine and lots of rainforest trees. We then got what is known as the Sceniscender back up to the top of the cliff. It is basically a big cable car. We couldn't see much when we went through the clouds, so most of our photos are of the Rainforest at the bottom of the valley.

We then drove back to the Olympic Park and got on a cruise which took us up the Parramatta river and first into Darling Harbour and the under the Sydney Harbour bridge and pastthe opera house and along the side of Aurora. We got off the ship at Cirqular Quay and got the train back to the hostel.

Once back, we made pasta for dinner and after looking at our videos and photos from the day, we went to sleep absolutely shattered!

This morning we were picked up at 10:20 by the airport shuttle bus from our hostel. We are currently sat in the airport where we have been since 10:45 waiting for our flight which doesn't leave until 16:55!! Overall we had fun in the blue mountains but neither of us would particularly jump at the chance to come to Sydney again. Roll on Brisbane! :-)

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