The second thing is drive thru bottle shops. In Australia they don't sell alcohol in supermarkets but in separate bottle shops (usually next door to the supermarket), how inconvenient! However, they make up for this inconvenience by allowing you to drive into a shop, have the seller ask what you want, you pop the boot and they put it in. You don't even get out of the car! AMAZING! Personally I think this is a great idea as I find it really difficult to walk when drunk.
(As a side note I forgot to mention that I have been breathalysed 3 times in Australia already! That doubles my record to date.)
So onto Sydney!
On our very first night in Sydney we went to the 'Best Bar 2011' with our new hosts Steve and Claire. 'Best Bar 2011' - It's January! How can they possibly know this is going to be the best bar in 2011? How presumptuous. They're probably right though as the dead cow head on the wall is definitely a winner if you ask me...
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| Maybe our presence made it the best bar in 2011? |
A couple of days later after recovering from hangovers that the devil created we decide to venture out into Sydney and see the sights. I am so excited to finally see the Opera House and Harbour Bridge but when we get there they look just like they do on TV and I don't get the magic 'Disneyland is real' feeling I expected. We take a few obligatory pictures, and many many more throughout our stay in Sydney all from different angles and with different weather backgrounds - a nice collection is on Facebook for viewing! We also go for a wander through the botanical gardens to Mrs Macquaries chair (a rock shaped like a chair) but the hordes of Japanese tourists queuing to take photos put us off from getting any of our own shots. Sorry.
Over the next few days we spend a lot of time visiting travel agents to try planning and booking our route up the East Coast to the Whitsundays and Fraser Island using the Greyhound Bus. I really can't decide who my favourite travel agent was - the one who used the best sales lines ever 'I'm dropping my pants with these offers', 'This price can only be guaranteed if you book now (unless you leave a $50 deposit then we can reserve them until tomorrow)' and 'Get out and come back on Saturday if you want this price' or the agent who to show us pictures of the Whitsundays turned his computer round, closed down a window, to reveal underneath a picture of a lady with her 'b-jango' out on full display. Nice. Or maybe my favourite agent has to be the one who sold us Greyhound tickets to Cairns but neglected to mention that the route wasn't running due to flooding. Ah travel agents - you gotta love them!
So Sydney. this place is humid by the way. Not sunny, humid. It is so deceiving - you look outside, it is grey, you wear jeans, you fail. No seriously there is hardly no sun for the majority of the time we are here yet it is the hottest place ever! We go on a day trip to the Blue Mountains, which apparently has beautiful views but as you can see from our pictures we mainly saw clouds and mist and fog.
We did go to a cool place called Flat Rock -over the years people have engraved their initials and date of visit into the stone, which is so amazing seeing dates from so far back. We also went for lunch at a nice town called Leura and to Scenic World where we travel across a valley in a glass bottomed sky lift and down the mountain on the steepest railway ever (I freaked out when I was on it as I thought it was going to go really fast like a rollercoaster, it didn't and I felt a bit like a fool for getting so scared!).
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| Looking unreasonably scared... |
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| Glass bottomed skylift |
Back up at the top we frolic around with the Three Sisters sculptures (they are really ugly sisters) before going back to Sydney on the ferry.
Back in Sydney we meet Steve at the Opera House Bar, which is absolutely PACKED with the work crowd. Great people watching. We then go to the Summit bar, which is a revolving bar and restaurant high up. We are lucky and just catch the sun set and Harbour Bridge with all the lovely lights on. I also commandeer a new umbrella (I left mine in a bar - d'oh) as it got caught on the window when someone put it down so as we moved around it was suddenly at our table instead - score!
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| View from Summit Bar |
This umbrella turns out to become very useful indeed, as Sydney seems to be enjoying lots of tropical rain storms at the moment. This only happens once every 15 years so how lucky are we to be experiencing this rather than a baking hot summer?! We went out to meet Felicity for drinks one fine evening, and before we knew it the rain was hammering down. We waited for ages under a covering, laughing at people running past with see-through tops from the rain, until we finally gave up going into town and found a random cafe in a park where I got this lovely shot of the rain. (Yes, I have actually written a whole paragraph just to get this photo into my blog! - anyone feel that sledge hammer?)
Skegness, well that's a beach that's nothing like Bondi, which incidentally is where we spent a few hours one day*. The sun is finally shining and we need to go to a famous Aussie Beach! And it is just like I imagined...golden sand, awesome surf, and people with great bodies wandering around in bikinis. Unfortunately we can't stay as long as we'd like as we have tickets for the Sydney and Bondi tourist bus which have a time limit on - boooo. So back we get on the big red bus around town. The big red bus, by the way is a bit crappy. Normally I like these buses as they show you the sights with little walking and you can hop on and off as you fancy. However, this buses pre-recorded tour guide sounds like an Aussie Chris Tarrent (ACT) and the timing of the talk is slightly off... for instance (please add your own ACT accent) 'If you look to the right you can see an amazing view of the Sydney skyline' we look to the right just in time to see the skyline disappear behind trees before we go back down the hill. oh.
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| Bondi Beach |
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| On the Big Red Bus going through a tunnel! |
Finally we decide we must leave Sydney and start going up the coast (before the flooding gets so bad we can't get to Brisbane ya see). Leaving our King's Cross, prostitute surrounded hotel we get the Greyhound bus North to Bondi and Brisbane. 7pm we get on the bus, 10pm we get off at a rest-stop - where a woman drives frantically into the petrol station, jumps out of her car screaming, to be followed by a tarantula crawling out after her! - 11pm we pick up more people, 12am the bus drivers swap over, 1am I can't sleep, 2am the driver is talking loudly about floods on the phone, 3am we get diverted due to floods, 4am we stop behind lorries as far as the eye can see as floods have cut off the road (20m flood), 6am we turn around, 8am we change buses with the option to stay in Coffs Harbour (and wait for the floods to go) or go back to Sydney, 8:30am we are back on the road to Sydney, 10am breakfast stop, 11am sleep at last, 2pm Independence Day begins, 3:30pm Independence Day ends, 4:30pm we stop back at the original rest-stop, 6:30pm we go back over the Sydney Harbour Bridge. 7pm we arrive back in Sydney. Super.
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| 24 Hours on a bus...looking good |
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| Flooded river |
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| Lorries waiting to go North... |
We do get to adopt a very cute boy whilst travelling though. He is 12 and travelling alone, with no extra cash to buy breakfast and lunch. I also love that he told us his iphone had 10hours of battery left ‘if’ he didn’t use it so he wouldn’t need to save any numbers in our phone (we offered just in case he needed to contact his sister in Sydney). 6 hours later he asks if he can borrow our phone ‘cause he used his battery playing games. Classic.
On the plus side back in Sydney we get to do a couple of things we missed first time round including visiting the Paddy’s Market (not as buzy as Victoria Market in Melbourne), seeing a couple of street performers at the Rocks (not as good as Edinburgh Fringe street performers), climbing the Harbour Bridge for more views of the Opera House, visiting the Rocks Night Market (yummy cupcakes), having a delicious breakfast at Wooloomaloo Harbour and my favourite day in Sydney yet ...
...wandering around Darling Harbour in the gorgeous sunshine, visiting the Wildlife centre where we see kangaroos, koalas, emu’s, butterflies, beetles, ants, a working bee hive, stick insects, the world’s deadliest snake and spiders as well a HUGE crocodile, which was so still it looked fake. This was followed by a very happy hour (5 – 8) with Felicity, looking over the Darling Harbour - beautiful water, light reflections and $4 sparkling wine....mmmm. I then got lost in a huge shopping mall, laughed too loud at a street performer and had a McDonalds. It was all good.
Now we are going back down South to Melbourne, which is kinda my favourite Aussie city anyway so all has worked out AND we get to see Andy, Jemma and Carl as well as Carys and Tom again...now just pray for some sunshine!
* Paragraph opening line supplied by C. Harvey 2011
