Sydney Adventures

This past weekend, Emily, Steph and I took a trip to Sydney. We left on the first flight out extremely early in the morning on Friday, so when we got to Base Backpackers Friday morning, we still had the entire day to roam about the city. We dropped our stuff off at Base and then immediately took off for Paddy's Market, making a quick stop at Starkbucks to energize. We spent the entire morning wandering around the markets, looking at all the Australian souveniers you could imagine from jewelery to boomarangs to Australian road signs, etc, and bought some things for our friends and family. For lunch we just grabbed some sandwiches at the market. After we finished shopping we walked through China town and walked around the city and explored a little more before checking back in at Base. We relaxed for a little while there, and then got ready to head out for dinner at Darling Harbour. Darling Harbour is an absolutely beautiful place with tons of little shops and restaurants lining the water. We ate at a place called Ice Box, and I got a sushi/sashimi platter for dinner which was absolutely delicious, and then we all grabben gelato for dessert. Then we headed over to the Sydney Aquarium at Darling Harbour, where we saw all sorts of tropical fish, turtles, sharks, crocodiles, penguins, nemos, doris, stingrays, platypus, etc. It was absolutey amazing! After a very long day, the three of us decided just to head back to the backpackers and call it an early night, so that we could wake up early Saturday morning to start another long day!
Saturday morning we got up early for our day in the Blue Mountains. We met up with our tour group just a few blocks from our backpackers, and then our tour guide, Disco, loaded us on the bus and began driving off to the mountains. We stopped in a little town on the way for breakfast and walked around a little market, and then headed out the first stop on our tour. The Blue Mountains were absolutey beautiful, and we got to see lots of them by hiking through several paths. This week there were horrible forest fires in the mountains, so many of the paths were closed, but we still managed to see everything. In the mountains there is also some cool temperate rainforests, which were absolutely beautiful and I commented that I thought the Rainforest Cafe must have gotten their inspiration from there. We saw some beautiful waterfalls, we saw the three sisters, tested out the "world's oldest phone booth" (a highly acoustic cave that sent our shouting messages into the mountains where people on the other side could hear), rode the Katoomba Scenic Railway, the world's steepest incline railway, etc. We were hiking and climbing steps all day and it was definitely a great workout a tons of fun. When we got back into Sydney after our long day in the mountains, we relaxed for awhile before heading back out to Darling Harbour for our second night's dinner. At dinner, we were lucky enough to see them shoot some fantastic fireworks off above Darling harbour. After dinner, we stopped over at the Scary Canary, the bar attached to our Backpackers, and had a few drinks and danced, before going to back to our room for another relatively early night in order to start the day earlier on Sunday.
On Sunday we set out first thing in the morning for Sydney Harbour. Here we saw the Opera House and the bridge, both of which were absolutely breathtaking and so exciting to see. Next we walked over to the Rocks, shopped about the markets for a bit, and then stopped for lunch at a delicious little place at the Rocks. After lunch we walked over to the Opera House and went inside for a few minutes to look around and checked out a photography exhibit at the Opera House. After the Opera House, we wandered over to the botanical gardens which were absolutely beautiful. We stopped at the Government House and took a tour of the house which ended being really interesting, and then walked around the gardens a bit more afterward. When we looked up into the trees we noticed that they were absolutely covered in enormous bats who were hanging upside down fanning themselves, attempting to keep cool (it was almost 100 degrees farenheit in Sydney on Sunday!). From the botanical gardens we just leisurely walked back to the backpackers and hung out there for a little while and relaxed before being picked up at 7:00 pm to go to the airport for our flight back to the Gold Coast. Sydney was such a great city and this weekend with Emily and Steph was SO much fun.
This week is my last week of classes at Bond and my last full week of livin here on the Gold Coast. I leave on Friday for NEW ZEALAND (!!), and I'll be there for two weeks- Wellington to visit Di for a week (I'll also hopefully get to meet up with Adam's friend Jeremy from his study abroad in NZ), and then I'll be doing a tour of the south island for a week. I get back from NZ on a Saturday, and then following my return I have three finals, one on Monday, on Tuesday and on Wednesday, and then I fly home that Thursday! Its nuts how quickly time has flown. To celebrate my last week here, last night I went out to SinCity in Surfer's for a VIP Midori party with Lizzy, Brodie, Ashley, Steph, Hailey and her brothers, Lochey, etc. The party was so much fun and the Midori special drinks were delicious and inexpensive so it was a really good time. Steph and I crashed at Ashley's house in surfer's, which by the way was a beautiful 6 million dollar mansion right on the water, and then he drove us back to Uni in the morning. Today Steph and I laid out by the pool in University Place for a while and had such a nice, relaxing day out in the sun.
This weekend was a blast and this week so far has been fun as well. The rest of this week will be spent finishing the last bits of my schoolwork for the semester, laying out by the pool and soaking in as much sun as I can, before I depart on Friday for my two week trip to New Zealand!
Can't believe its just over three weeks until I'm back in the states!
Love and miss you all!
Arlyn