Sydney

Having been to Oz a few times now but only experiencing life on the quiet side of this huge convict coloney it was time to make the 2000+ mile flight across the nothingness to the east coast. For some reason (pure bigitory!) I wasn’t expecting much from Sydney, with its constant reminders of home, and I’m not just talking gap year students although they are everywhere, I’m talking Soho, Kings Cross, Victoria statues (the Queen not Beckham), Hyde Park and more, I thought it would just be like London in boardshorts. But I stand corrected, again, it was actually quite a nice city.
We arrived early evening and instantly went out walking having dumped our bags, 20 mins later a girl jogged passed us and suddenly stopped and from behind we heard her call our names!! It was someone we’d travelled with for a few weeks in Argentina a couple of years ago who was now living in Sydney – small world!! After chatting over old times we headed, predictably, straight down to the harbour and it is every bit as impressive as you’d expect. The bridge, the harbour and the Opera house lit up at night is a stunning sight. The harbour is full of trendy expensive looking bars but makes for a perfect evening stroll… oh yeah, thats the other comparison to London, the bloody cost of everything! Ooh to be a student wasting away that loan on Oz guide books and not study material. It seems to be a really young city, you barely see anyone over the age of 40 (notice how ‘young’ is now classed as under 40, not that I’m putting off getting old or anything!) and come Friday night they are out doing as us young do at weekends.
The following morning we rushed around to see the sights heading first to the Botanical gardens to see the huge fruit bats hanging in the trees and then back down to the harbour to see it in the daylight. We then spent a chilled hour or 2 in the park before catching the ferry out to Manly. Manly is 30 minutes out along the coast and home to Jo and Paul, 2 friends of ours who used to live back in the UK. We’d arranged to catch up with them for the evening, so after a quick trip to the bottle shop (so Australian) we set about getting drunk, catching up and boring them with stories and pictures of our travels. The next morning feeling slightly worse for wear we took a drive down the local beach to grab some brekkie and chill out while the headaches subsided before it was time to head to the airport and the start of groundhog day.