Last stop - Sydney

Well, the first thing we noticed when we arrived in Sydney was the cold, people had told us it'd be cold, but we thought they meant like, Australia cold...but no....England cold!! We went and checked into our hostel which was a bit of a dive it has to be said, and our room was really cold and damp, but it was cheap and we got extra discount, so we made it our home for the week!

Now, the world cup had just started and all the bars were showing it, which is all well and good, the bad thing was that coverage started at 11pm, so watching football all night meant sleeping all day, and that's what we did on quite a few nights. I didn't watch the football, Rich did, but I couldn't get any sleep without him as our room was so cold, so we did have a few wasted days due to the footie!

That said though, we did have a bloody good look around Sydney, we did a lot of walking around different parts of the city and there are many different parts. If you didn't have much money in Sydney, I reckon you could still have regular nights out, there are so many bars offering cheap drinks and meals, free poker, free pool competitions, and Karaoke all with beer tokens for prizes! We made the most of all these things of course! Rich won $30 of beer tokens when he came second in the poker, a crate of beer when he came second in the pool comp and he even won a free drink on the karaoke!! Yes, I did say Karaoke! Most of you will probably know that Rich doesn't do Karaoke, for one, he can't sing and 2 he thinks it's cheesy and chavvy and not for him.....however, when we were out with our new friend Mark, who loves it, he took us to a karaoke bar and put Rich's name down, and fair play to him, he got up and did quite well, and then he got up again, by this point there was only me Rich and Mark in the bar and we couldn't get Rich off the stage, he loved it!!! Unfortunately I had no camera that night so no photo's, sorry.

One thing I've always wanted to do is climb Sydney Harbour Bridge, it's an impressive looking bridge and looked like it'd be hard work....so off we went to the bridge climb place and paid our $240 for a sunset climb. Took about an hour to get us kitted up and have all the safety talks and the likes and eventually we set out to do it. I expected it to be tough, I expected to be knackered and I have to say I was disappointed, maybe it was because we stopped every 5 minutes because we'd caught up with the group in front, but it didn't feel like a challenge at all! When we reached the top there were excellent views all across the city and of course, the Opera House. You couldn't take any thing up there with you so we had to buy the photo's that they took, that's why there's only one here. It was disappointing but I'm glad I did it and did really enjoy it. It was great seeing the opera house from that vantage point as it is a really impressive building.

The other trip we did there was to the Blue Mountains (so called as all the oil from the eucalyptus trees gives off a blue haze). But not like a busload of people going to the same tourist spots, we went with an aboriginal guide who took us on a walkabout. We followed the same track that the indiginous people used, when the boys had to go walkabout as part of their initiation into manhood. We were told all sorts of stories along the way as the boys would have been as well as him teaching us about all the flora and fauna in that area. We stopped at various caves and meeting points and camp sites and told various stories about these points and what would happen there. There were carvings and rock paintings in some of the caves and meeting points and we were told the stories that they represented. It was really really interesting as well as a good walk and we didn't see anybody else all day.

So that was pretty much it for Sydney, we had a good look round, did some shopping, some eating and drinking and watching footie and a couple of tours. We sorted out our visa for vietnam and organised a load of crazy currency for the next couple of months.

But, all too soon it was time to leave Oz :-( We've really enjoyed it here and will definately come back. But on to new adventures, different cultures and probably some crazy food....next stop Singapore!