Sydney - New Years Eve

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Hi peeps,
We touched down in Sydney on Dec 28th and arrived at our hostel at around midday. It was a bit of a shock to the system to see our dorm room for the first time as there were 6 of us crammed into a tiny room with bunk beds ( give me a wildlife filled treehouse any day) and a shared shower room and toilet. I think Laura found it especially daunting as she was the only girl and let's just say not much privacy! We spent the next couple of days exploring the city and doing the usual touristy sightseeing, opera house, harbour bridge, darling harbour and government house were all ticked off the list. It was quite strange to be stood in front of all these famous sights when you've seen them in pictures and on tv so many times, it was like being in a postcard. We explored the botanic gardens for hours trying to find the perfect spot to watch the NYE fireworks that would follow a couple of days later. We went along on a cliff top beach walk ,arranged by our hostel, from Bondi beach to Coogee beach passing 5 or 6 smaller beaches and coves along the way. This took approximately 3 hours in the midday sun climbing up and over rocks and cliffs (we weren't quite prepared wearing flip flops) with some amazing views and photo ops with legs dangling precariously over the cliff edges.There is a tradition, it seems, on this beach walk to take a few boxes of (the dreaded) goon along for the walk . People not familiar with goon I will explain, it is basically very cheap strong wine in a 5 litre bag in a box. Sean and I were nominated by our hostel mates to carry several of these heavy boxes with us on the walk, the only sensible solution to me and Sean was to drink as much of it as possible to lighten the load. Bad idea. Very sore heads. December 31st was soon upon us and we were excited to see the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge fireworks that we'd talked about for months before our trip. We got up early and headed to the botanical gardens to join the masses of people queuing for a prime location. We accidentally joined the queue in front of about 2 thousand people who had camped out all night and were awarded with a great spot overlooking the opera house and bridge to set up our picnic and wile away the 14 hours until the fireworks. We weren't disappointed. The display was amazing and definitely worth the wait. We visited the Sydney aquarium and got up close and personal to a variety of scary sea creatures (no not Laura in the morning) from stingrays to all types of sharks and giant crabs and luminous jelly fish, neon coral and thousands of tropical fish. Hopefully we'll get to see some in the wild when we head up the coast to snorkel. After a long and tiring few days walking around the city we ended our time here by chilling out for the day on Bondi beach (getting sunburnt.....we learnt our lesson!) with friends from home Jess, Rachel and Robbie and new friends Tom and Siobhan, followed by a beach BBQ on Bronte beach. Next stop Melbourne, Love and miss you all ( not too much) Jonny, Laura and Sean Xxx

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Comments

[Lynda & David]

Wow ! Take care of yourselves in the heat!!