SYDNEY

It was a pretty grey day, but Grand Pacific drive was a nice one, with lots of tight bends and much like some of the coastal drives we did in California. We stopped at one point after driving across Sea Cliff bridge which goes right over the sea, I wanted to get a picture but the only place I could park was round the corner and without walking ages I couldn't even see the bridge. We ended up down on a little beach area which had some interesting rock formations. There were warnings not to go into the sea as it is too dangerous due to currents and stingers. There were blue bottle jellyfish all washed up on the rocks, they looked so strange, like little water balloons. The council had provided an open swimming pool for 'safe swimming', which doesn't get supervised, or maintained, and it looked to be the most dangerous way to swim to me! It was like an old abandoned bathing area from some creepy horror film or something, the water was as murky as a swamp, you couldn't see how deep it was, and you could see by the rocks surrounding it that the tide came in over the top of the thing so most of that water was probably sea water anyway, that had gone stagnant, and God knows how many creatures were living in it from getting washed up every day! We went back to the car and moved on. We needed to return the car with an empty tank, and luckily the car had a screen which told me how many kilometers we had left. The way we were doing the last stretch to Sydney was via the Royal National Park which was lovely to drive through, but by the time we reached it we had hit the red and only had 80km left. We went ahead and risked it, and watched the ticker go down the further we went, and with no petrol stations across the park it got pretty hairy, especially when we got stuck behind a huge truck going uphill. But luckily we just made it through with 30km to spare, we stopped at a petrol station as soon as we reached civilisation and put $5 just to push us over the finish line. That only pushed our kms upto 35, but I was convinced we should make it as we were only 10 minutes away from the airport where we were dropping the car off at this point. We got down to about 20km, critical stages of petrol, the car is beeping at us, and then we miss our turning into the rental drop off area, as it was not sign posted which is always useful! We ended up stuck on a by way round to domestic departues where we were funneled into the car park for departures, which is one where you collect the ticket as you go in, petrol is down to 13km, we had to pay $7.50 just to get back out the car park, it was very stressful and frustrating! We went back up the same road, rental drop off was clearly sign posted from that direction! Found it, and dropped the car off with 9km to spare, phew. Next we needed to figure out a way to get to Neutral Bay on the North side of Sydney, from the airport. We ended up taking the airport express train to North Sydney, with was on the metro system and only took about 20 minutes, but cost just over $30 for us both for a single way ride. We stopped in central and needed to swap lines, we had to go down a big flight of stairs, across, and back up a load of stairs to the next platform, with all our stuff. Luckily a guy helped us up the stairs to the platform as our train was there and it was shattering lugging our stuff. Australia in general has not been very friendly for people with wheels, weather you are disabled, have a buggy or luggage, there wasn't any other option than to take stairs. As we went under the subway to the next platform we witnessed loads of armed police chasing after a lady, police dogs and all, that was exciting. I also noticed police just stop searching people as they came through the turnstiles, saw a guy who had a knife in his bag. Anyway we got to North Sydney, via the Harbour Bridge! The weather on the way to Sydney had said that they had seen the coldest start to summer ever, with rain and temeperatures not topping the early twenties. It was drizzling when we stepped outside. Typical! Thankfully we got picked up by Phil's step Sister, Joanna, went and collected Joanna's daughter, Orla, from pre school, grabbed something for dinner, and made it back to the house. So nice to know, once again, that we were setting up camp for a while, and just nice to be in a home environment. Joanna needed to go out, so we sat with Orla for the evening, walked their little dogs, Finny and Josie, had a delicious dinner and just relaxed and caught up with some internet time. Bliss.

Washed up blue bottle jellyfish

 We were up at a reasonable time the next morning, I ended up getting hooked sorting my bags out which took a lot of time but I felt much more organised afterwards! We slowly got ourselves ready for the day, walked the dogs had a bite to eat for lunch and set off to walk towards the city around mid day. We started wandering in the direction we though Harbour Bridge might be, got so far and realised we really didn't know where we were going and saw that it wasn't as easy as we had first thought to find our way around. So we had to go back to the house again, got online and got some walking directions! And we set off for the second time. We made it to Harbour Bridge, and walked across. We were lucky to catch a nice day for the first part and got some lovely pictures of the harbour, opera house and skyline from the bridge. I just loved the image we had in front of us as we walked along and couldn't stop taking photos. It's a beautiful city. We made it to the other side and wandered down through an area called The Rocks, which has lot of history and is full of character with old buildings, narrow alley ways and cobbled paths. We had a little look around a museum, and then headed down to Circular Quay through a little market that was on. Walking around Circular Quay was nice, we went to the end of one of the wharves and sat there for a bit, looking back on the bridge, and then went to to carry on round towards Sydney Opera House. There were various street performers, Aboriginie guys, musicians and perfomers. We got stuck watching one guy who liked to be known as 'Psycho Sam'. He did all this cheesy build up to a juggling act up a ladder we wanted to perform, he was very cringe-worthy to watch and things kept going wrong for him, it felt like everyone who had crowded round felt awkward being there, so we managed to slope away! We got to the opera house which was nice and we went up the steps. It's a really cool building and didn't look like it does from other angles when you're up close. I didn't realise they were separate buildings. After that we went into the botanical gardens, and collapsed for a while. We'd done a lot of walking and we had to go all the way back after that, so we had a little rest in the sun. We didn't go far into the gardens so we didn't see a lot of it but we had seen enough botanical gardens so we didn't feel like we missed out on too much! We sat for nearly an hour, and then began the long, uphill walk back. We walked through a little downstairs bar area along Circular Quay which was nice, it was a Friday night and it was buzzing, we felt very under dressed walking through though as it was Christmas party time and everybody was very dressed up! We made it back to the house around 6pm. Joanna's her husband, Brian, were out again for the evening, so we sat for Orla, again. They bought us a Thai takeaway, which is the first time I've every tried Thai, and it was the most delicious thing! I was blown away, think that'll be my choice of takeaway now once we're home! I hit the sack pretty early, the walking completely took it out of me that day.

The lovely Sydney harbour

 On the Saturday we were up again at a reasonable time, but didn't have too much planned for the day. There was an old Quarantine station in the Sydney Harbour National Park which was on the North side of Sydney but we figured it'd be a lot of effort to get there, and probably expensive to get in. Instead we just headed down to Luna Park, which sits below the bridge right on the harbour. It's a funny little fairground / theme park, with the strangest clown based theme, surprised kids aren't too scared to go there! It was fun walking through anyway, and on the way back up to the house we found a nice little spot to go down to one evening to get a nice shot of the skyline and harbour at night. I had the left overs of my takeaway for lunch which was delicious! Joanna had won a free fun doggy photo shoot for that afternoon, so we thought it'd be fun to go with them and watch that. We went to a strange park which doubled up as a graveyard, there were lots of other dogs around. One lady had her pretty large Staffie come up and say hello to Finny and Josie, but she said 'he's not mine, I just thought I'd let him say hello to test his temperament, I'm not sure what he's like yet' I can't believe she said that! Joanna's two were about a quarter of the size of him! All was fine anyway, the photographer turned up and with a bit of work to get Orla and the dogs to all cooperate,  I'm sure he managed to get some nice photos! We played in the park with Orla after that and then headed back to the house. We popped to the supermarket to get some food in for everyone, and then chilled out for a bit. Joanna and Brian were out again that evening too, so she said we could go and get a film out for us, we walked the dogs up with us and rented out Finding Nemo! Orla was upset about Joanna and Brian going out that evening and was very grizzly. We stuck the film on and got part the way through but Orla found it too scary and it was upsetting her further, so we put on some Miffy and Friends instead! She was asking for her Mum and Dad, Phil and I weren't sure how this was going to go as neither of us are good with crying children, but it was time for her to go to bed and through her crying, she was very cooperative bless her, and she sobbed herself off to sleep. We finished watching Finding Nemo as we'd been craving it since snorkelling! And I got a fairly early night again.

Me and Sydney Harbour Bridge

 When I woke up it was quite bright in our room, so I got up and looked out the window, and to my surprise it was a clear blue sky and the sun was blaring down. When I'd checked the weather it had said the rest of our days in Sydney would be rainy and storms. So I got Phil up and we rushed off to Bondi Beach to try and make the most of the sun. It was about a half an hour walk to Circular Quay again, and then a 40 minute bus ride to Bondi. Luckily Joanna had given us a bus ticket which we could use to make 4 journeies each on, which meant we weren't going to need to spend anymore money on public transport whilst we were there. The bus through a place called Bondi Junction which looked really nice, great for shopping. We got there about 11.30am and enjoyed a good half an hour of pure sunshine, it hit 31 degrees. Bondi Beach is lovely, although a lot of people say there are nicer beaches around, you've got to go to Bondi really if you are in Sydney, I liked it! We could see the storm clouds looming and the blue sky was disappeairing off over the ocean, it was getting quite cool so we grabbed a bite to eat and then caught a bus back, we managed to spend a good hour there so I was happy with that! As soon as we got on the bus it absolutely hammered down, lightening and thunder accompanying it. Luckily the bus took a little longer on the way back due to traffic, probably because everyone wanted to leave Bondi at that moment! We got back to Circular Quay and although it was still raining, the lightening had stopped thankfully as we had to walk back up over Harbour Bridge to get home! The temperature on the way back was 20 degrees, it had dropped quite rapidly! Still it was fairly humid and we got hot walking up the steep hill back to Neutral Bay. We got back and watched TV for a bit, then we headed out to a friend of Joanna and Brians, as we had all been invited over for a Christmas dinner! He had a very nice flat and there was 11 of us there in total. As we sat down to dinner, Joanna leaned over to give someone their plate, and the plate snapped in half onto my head! Phil and I both got it down our clothes too. It hurt but it was quite funny really and it was no one's fault! The Christmas dinner was delicious anyway, we really really enjoyed that! We had lots of wine throughout the evening, and lots of chocolate after dinner. We left around 8pm to get Orla home for bed, but we drove via Kings Cross on the way home as we'd wanted to go there at some point to see it as we'd heard lots about it, but it was better to go at night as it was known as the red light district of Sydney! It had lots of neon lights and seedy shops and clubs but it wasn't as bad as everyone made it out to be, mind you we only drove through! When we got back Joanna let us ring home which was again, so nice! Mum wasn't in again! But I spoke to Chris, Melissa, my Nan and even Layla down the phone! So I'd managed to speak to everyone in the house except Mum which was typical as she'd been most desperate to speak to me on the phone! Oh well, not long until we are home at this point anyway! And we'd had plenty of ineternet to keep in touch over the last few days. I spent ages on the phone, but after that Phil and I walked down to the spot we found when we went to Luna Park, to catch the skyline at night. It was still drizzling at this point so the photos didn't come out too well, but it was still amazing! We headed back and for the final time in Australia, we went to sleep!

Bondi Beach!

Sydney at night

 I was awake early again the next morning, and I began the mass sorting and organising our suitcases needed! It took me until around lunchtime just to sort everything out, and get Phil's suitcase completely packed. My suitcase was 3kg over the weight limit last time we flew so we had to arrange things to spread the weight out. It was a grey day again but we had some lunch and then decided to use our last 2 bus journies on going into the actual city centre to have a wander around, we'd only really covered the edges of the city. We got in around 2pm, first of all we went to the Queen Victoria Building, which is a beautiful old shopping mall. It was decorated for Christmas amazingly! That was really nice and then we just walked up George Street, then back down Pitt Street which are like the two main streets. We had a little wander through Westfield shopping centre too which was also very nice, and then headed back to the bus stop. We'd spent a couple of hours there but we needed to get back so I could start backing my suitcase! We weren't sure where to pick the bus back up from because where we were dropped off was a one way road, we were walking around for a while trying to find it, then we saw one that was going our direction so decided to follow it! We saw where it pulled over we were stuck waiting to cross the road for so long we just missed it! It was only 10 minutes until the next one anyway so it wasn't too bad. We got back around 4.30pm and after uploading the last lot of photos for Australia, I began to pack my suitcase. I squeezed everything in fairly comfortably. We'd filled our rucksacks with all the heavy goods, apart from liquids obviously, as we'd not had our hand luggage weighed throughout the whole trip! We were pretty much done and ready to go by about 6pm. We didn't need to leave until 7.30pm, so we relaxed for a bit and had some dinner. When Brian got home he took us to the airport. We nearly missed the same turning that Phil and I did when we tried to drop off the car, it's no wonder as there is only one lane on the motorway for international flights, and two off to domestics! Doesn't seem sensible. Anyway we made it, said our goodbyes, and checked in. I only managed to shave off 1kg my suitcase, really not sure what is weighing that down now! But Phil's was 2kg under the limit now so we know we have some space there to bring stuff back from Hong Kong. We only had an hour to wait by the time we got through, Phil got pulled aside as usual to get swabbed and everything! And we boarded the plane for the penultimate time! We got some good seats, just two of us in a row, window and aisle, perfect! We were sat for a while before we started to move, just as we got to the runway and the captain announced there was a problem with one of the emergency door so we had to go back and have the engineers look at it. It was fixed eventually and we took off just under hour late, one minute before the 11pm curfew at Sydney airport! I managed to watch most part of Hangover II before we even took off, I started to watch another film, Life In A Day, then we got our meal, it wasn't as tasty as the other meals we'd had, just boiled vegetables and a little bit of chicken in gravy! But glad we didn't stuff ourselves before the flight this time so we felt sick eating it! I completely conked out for a good 3 hours, not been able to sleep like that on any of the transport we've been on since we left! I needed that, Sydney completely took it out of me! When I woke there was only 2 and a half hours of the flight left, and Phil was snoozing. Phil soon woke and said he felt really sick, which was strange as he doesn't get motion sickness or anything, I let him have the aisle seat so he could access the toilets easier! Breakfast came around, that wasn't overly nice either but nice to get some fruit and things. Phil managed to eat bits and began to feel better, probably needed a bit of a sugar boost or something, his diet has been dreadful through this trip! With only an hour left of the flight, I watched a couple of episodes of The Office and then we landed. Despite being late taking off, we landed bang on time at 5am.

Queen Victoria Building

Australia was amazing, and the only place I've left not feeling like I wanted to leave and move on to the next place, despite looking forward to Hong Kong. We really did have a great time, in fact te only negative thing we have to say about Asutralia is their traffic light system! They are a real pain, as a pedestrian, it takes a very long time to get somewhere if you have to cross several roads, or even just the one road it can take you 10 minutes to just to get to your local shop or something. Traffic gets total priority, you are better off driving around the cities than walking, even if it is a short distance. It got very frustrating at times, especially if you want to get somewhere on time, or catch a bus or something, no wonder people jay walk all the time! Anyway, Australia went quickest of them all, which was no surprise really. Can't believe we were there a whole month..

So, we have reached the home straight!