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Other entries in Sydney

I love Sydney!

There was a lot of anticipation for me coming into Sydney on the OZ Experience bus. Sydney is one of those cities like London/New York that I've seen so many times on the TV, that I was very excited realising I was about to see it. It's one of those places that back home in England I never thought seemed entirely real (if that makes any sense!) because its just so far away (literally on the other side of the world!) and you get used to the idea that you're never going to see it. The weather was awful coming into Sydney, but I've got used to that now in Australia! The jeans have finally come out and I don't think the shorts will be coming back out again until Fiji! We've probably got to the point where the weather back home is starting to get better than the weather where we're travelling!

I was very excited as we came into the city as I realised we were going to drive over the Sydney Harbour Bridge! What a way to enter Sydney! The weather was crap to be honest but with things like the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Sydney Opera House to look at you can't really complain too much! We were dropped off as it was getting dark and I instantly had the feeling of being in New York! I could tell I was going to like this place! We went out on our first night to a place called 'The Gaff' with some other people from the bus, but we couldn't find half of them and the place was so packed that we couldn't move (even in the quiet spots!) I ended up getting beer spilt over me every 5 seconds and was getting so pissed off that we left! I stayed up to watch Man Utd vs AC Milan that night. What a game! The TV room was packed at 4:45am!

On our first day in the city, we took a walk down to the harbour. It was ANZAC day (similar to remembrance Sunday - except everyone seems to get dressed up in suits and get drunk afterwards!) so most places were shut, except for the pubs which were doing a roaring trade! Everyone was having games of 2 up, where you bet money with someone on the outcome of the toss of a coin! Sydney Harbour Bridge is an amazing sight. It has to be the most beautiful bridge in the world (if your into that sort of thing!) even with the shit weather. The Sydney Opera House on first glance though was another matter. Up close and with cloudy grey skies it looks very small, dirty and quite frankly unimpressive for whats supposed to be one of the most famous buildings in the world! The main entrance inside looks like a car park because its all grey concrete. The guy designing the box office must have had no imagination! Either that or they spent all the money they had on the exterior! Even the tiles on the roof looked like they'd come off a bathroom wall! I hoped it looked better in the right weather. We walked across the bridge, which gives some great views of the city (except it was raining and cloudy!) Luckily the weather was meant to change for the week ahead. Sydney looks bad in cloud!

The second day the weather was gorgeous, which was handy because I was climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge! It was cool because I was climbing it with 2 girls we had met on the OZ bus who booked the same climb as me. They make you put on special suits and you are given headsets and radios! It made me feel like an astronaut going into space! The initial walk to the main ladders seemed bloody high and we weren't even on the main arch bit yet! It actually felt really safe and you can never see directly over the side because there is a barrier all along the way. There was also a stepped walkway all the way to the top, so it never felt that steep. The scariest bit was going across a walk way that crossed to the other side of the bridge because it was very narrow and there was nothing either side but a 75 metre drop onto the road below! You were always attached to the bridge though so you never felt unsafe. The view from the top 134 meres above the harbour is simply stunning. It was a shame I couldn't take my camera to the top. I was having a chat with the girls at the top (after we'd been used to the view for an hour or so) as if we were sitting in a pub, and I suddenly realised I was having a normal conversation with someone standing on top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, as if I did it every day, and had completely forgotten about the 360 degree panoramic view of Sydney! The whole thing lasted about 3 hours and was kind of expensive (65 pounds - well thats expensive to me at the moment!) but so worth it. Not too many people can say they've done it! In the reception area they had pictures of all the famous people who'd climbed the bridge such as Will Smith, Michael Caine, Richard Branson and Kylie etc so I was in good company! I said I wasn't going to spend any more money on pictures but they looked so good and I needed proof that I'd done it! I spent the rest of the day with the girls I'd done the climb with and went for a walk through the botanical gardens to Mrs Macqueries point where there were some great views of the harbour and opera house. Its a good place to get the I'm on the other side of the world photo! The sunset that evening with the backdrop of the opera house and the bridge was fantastic. The view of those two amazing landmarks has to be my favourite view of the trip so far. I take back what I said about the opera house. In the sun its a fantastic looking building and you realise what an amazing piece of construction it is. It's like any famous building you've seen in pictures and on TV in that it looks different the first time you see it in real life.

I was very lucky one night because I was walking around the harbour and suddenly I heard a huge bang. I turned around and there were fireworks going off behind the opera house and harbour bridge! I couldn't believe it! No one had any idea what they were for. All I saw was a small barge floating under the bridge saying something about"Welcome China....."! I've never grabbed my camera so quick in my life! My finger was never off the capture button! They went on for about 15 minutes as well so were pretty good. Seeing them over the harbour was so incredibly amazing! It was one of those special moments in life I'll never forget! I didn't think I'd ever see fireworks over Sydney Harbour so I felt extremely lucky. I cuoldn't stop smiling afterwards! I wanted to ring someone and say "I've just been watching fireworks over the Sydney Harbour Bridge"! I've definitely got to come back for the New Year fireworks. It would be incredible.

The next sunny day we got I thought I would go and check out Bondi Beach. So thats what I did while Trev went and met his uncle who lives in Sydney, for the 1st time ever! Bondi wasn't as impressive as I thought it would be and it was a lot smaller than I had imagined. Newquay seemed just as impressive when I saw it a couple of years ago! I guess it's just because it's the nearest beach to Sydney. I had a sit on the beach for half an hour and collected some Bondi sand in a bottle to take home. I spent the rest of the day doing what I do best in Sydney. So there was a lot of taking pictures of the opera house and harbour bridge! I did also see a cool market in the Rocks which is an area near the bridge. I would've spent so much money if I had the money to or the space in my bag! After the market though I did tke pictures of the bridge from just about every possible angle conceivable! I even walked across the bridge to north Sydney where I got some really cool pictures of the bridge at night. I don't know what it is about Sydney Harbour but I keep getting drawn back to it! In the morning I'd be like "I could go down to the harbour and take 100's more pictures that I've got already"! Sydney Harbour Bridge really is a beautiful bridge though. It had this hypnotic effect where I couldn't stop looking at it!

In our second week in Sydney we went on a day trip to the Blue Mountains, which were awesome. Apparently the oils given off in the air by the eucalyptus trees on the sides of the mountains make them seem blue in the distance (which at time I guess is kind of true....a bit!) We also got to go on the worlds steepest railway which was like a rollercoaster ride in itself. When you sat in it you were almost lying down! All the girls were screaming their heads off! There were also loads of wild kangaroos we could get really close up to, which was cool. I didn't get to see the spot where The Darkness filmed Love Is Only A Feeling (despite asking the tour guide if he knew where it was!) but I did find a cool place which looked out over a massive, amazing looking part of the mountains and played it on my MP3 player while leaning on the fence. It was a very nice moment (if you're a fan of The Darkness that is - if not you'd probably think it was pretty sad!)

I decided I couldn't leave Sydney without looking around the opera house so I did a guided tour. It's amazing that it cost $100 million dollars and 14 years to build (not the predicted 4!) The interior of the lobby I was expecting to be really grand but no joke was made purely of concrete and looked like a car park! The two main performing halls also didn't look amazingly grand but you couldn't not be impressed how it was all contained in these weird shaped shells that every recognises around the world (the designer got the idea for the famous exterior after peeling an orange apparently!) In one hall I got to see a rehearsal of a ballet and in the other a rehearsal by the Sydney symphony orchestra, which was fantastic. I was so mesmerised by it that by the end I was expecting a massive applause becauase it felt like a preformance was actually going on! They were so powerful. Apparently the opera house has a strict policy on entering the performance halls when a performance is about to begin, as in if you're not there on the dot, you're not coming in! They nearly caused an international incident by nearly refusing entry to a US president! I tried to go and see a performance of an opera or a ballet (yes an opera or a ballet!) but the tickets were either too expensive or not on the right date! In June there is going to be a performance of an opera based on the music from video games (think Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog!) which I would've loved to have seen because it's a little bit different from the normal operas. I was expecting the opera house to be really elitist, but one of their policies or aims is to attract everyone to come to the opera house from all ages (something I realised when the tour guide said there was no dress code - so jeans and T-shirt are ok for the opera!) which I thought was really cool. We managed to get tickets in the end to go and see a Welsh comedian called Mark Watson (he won the Edinburgh Fringe 2006 Comedy prize apparently so we thought he must be funny!) who was really funny. We were sitting on a table in the front row next to the stage! I was literally the nearest person to him in the entire auditorium! Luckily I was left alone! He said he wouldn't take the piss out of anyone like other comedians! Trev was asked to be timekeeper thought and had to shout out at a specific time during the show so he could see how much time he had left! We were asked if we lived near Maidstone and he made a joke about how crap he thought it was! It felt pretty cool as well sitting inside the Sydney Opera House watching a show! It was a very funny evening and definitely worth the 8 pounds we paid. I can also say I've been to the Sydney Opera House (even if it wasn't a ballet or opera!)

Several people had recommended we go to a place called the 'Orbit Bar', which is basically a bar at the top of a skyscraper. We went up in the lift and when the doors opened we were like "erm....they're going to throw us straight out of here"! It did look incredibly posh and we did look (I guess to them anyway!) a bit out of place being that we were both backpackers! At first they said we should come back with smart casual dress and shoes. Then the guy changed his mind and found us a table in the corner. The cheeky thing was that a women came in next wearing trainers, joggers and a hoodie and was shown to a table no worries! The view over Sydney Harbour though was amazing. It felt very relaxed watching the sun go down over Sydney from 45 floors up, in a swivel chair with a beer in my hand! Life doesn't get much better than that! I wanted everyone at home to see the view I had at that moment! It's got to be the most enjoyable beer I've had in my life. We also had a very attractive waitress bringing us over our drinks! I had a couple of cockails too, which with the beer were quite expensive, but with the viw we had I didn't care too much! At one point I had a really weird sensation because the glass appeared to be moving! I then realised it was us that was moving. It was a revolving bar! It just got better and better! So we sat there for 1 hour and half until we'd done a 360 degree spin of the Sydney skyline! Very special. It wasn't a typical backpacker night out - cocktails at a revolving bar and then a show at the Sydney Opera House but it was a great night all the same! I need to find a revolving bar in London now! If not I'm building one! I reckon it would be a great place to take someone on a first date!

Theres also another beach near Sydney called Manly (which seems more popular than Bondi with surfers we've spoken to) so we gave that a go. I actually preferred it myself to Bondi, and you had to travel to it by ferry so we got to travel through Sydney Harbour, which was cool. More close up photo oppurtunities of the harbour bridge! I decided to stay up that night and watch Man Utd make their glorious way to the Champions League Final....oh no thats right we got demolished didn't we! I seriously wish I hadn't bothered. I got up late that day because I'd stayed up all night, but I still had some daylight (gets dark at like 5pm!) so went up the Sydney Tower (tallest building in Australia) for some cool views. It's really odd because the tower doesn't start from the ground - it's on top of a regular rectangle shaped building. It's like they built a shopping centre and as an after thought decided to stick a big tower on top so they could call it the tallest building in Australia! Up close it looks kind of weird!

I went to catch yet another sunset over the harbour as well! Before I left I just stared at the harbour bridge and opera house for about 15 minutes! It was weird because for the last 10 days, I could look at them as much sa I wanted to every day. It was getting to the point where I just expected to see them. I realised that if I never come back to Sydney or even Australia then right now could be my last chance to look at them for the rest of my life! I thought I should take in the view as much and for as long as possible. I was like "just another minute"! It was kind of sad (well stupid really!) because even though they are just buildings, I'd got kind of attached to them. It's the first time I'd thought about anything like that on this trip. I guess they're just such icons of Sydney and Australia that you can't help be impressed by them.

Trev went onto Canberra on my last day in Sydney because he wanted to look around the institute of sport, so I had a final day in Sydney on my own to look around before catching up with him the next day. I went to Paddy's market where I bought some of the cheapest tat...erm souvenirs you'll see in your life! I'd been quite restrained with my souvenir shopping until that point! I nearly bought the ultimate in Australian tat (a cork hat!) but I thought what the hell would I use it for! I certainly wouldn't wear it! I walked over the harbour bridge one more time and through a place called Darling Harbour, which is another beautiful harbour in Sydney. I also went to the Sydney Entertainment Centre to ask about Elton John again Dad! When I walked into reception and asked the receptionist pointed out I was actually staring at the Elton John suite when I walked in the door! She wasn't sure if I could come in to take a picture but luckily the general manager of the place walked by and let me in to take a picture of the outside (after I'd told him you were such a big Elton Johnfan and I couldn't come all this was to Australia and not get a picture!) I wasn't actually allowed in but he told me it was used for private functions and contained lots of original artwork, a suit worn by Elton John, framed discs etc So I couldn't go in but at least I found it and got a picture of the door!

On my last evening, I went for a $5 steak with 3 girls from my dorm (2 pouns for a steak - makes Spoons steak night look expensive!) and then for a hot chocolate at the Lindt Cafe! Yes, Lindt have a cafe and the hot chocolates are amazing! They give you a small pot of melted chocolate and a small pot of frothy milk and then you mix the two together! Was awesome! I';ve got a bit addicted to chocolate in Sydney. I discovered the big Sydney Woolworths were selling big 250g bars of Milka chocolate for $1.99! Thats less than Mars Bars over here! As a result, every time I wanted a Mars Bar, I'd buy this huge bar of chocolate instead...and eat it all in one go...for 5 days in a row! I felt like such a slob on the last day!

I was actually quite sad to be leaving Sydney. I really do hope I come back here one day. It's the first place travelling where I actually didn't want to leave (not that I wanted to leave everywhere else but I was just probably ready to move on). There were still things I wanted to do that I didn't have time for like the tour of the Olympic Park and the Telstra Stadium where Johnny Wilkinson scored the winning kick for England in the World Cup. I thought Sydney was a beautiful city and somewhere I could definitely live/work. Most backpackers I've spoken to who have been to Melbourne and Sydney always say they like Melbourne more. I don't see how I'm going to like Melbourne more after being to Sydney! To be honest I was always going to love Sydney because well...I love big cities. I think you have to hate cities not to like Sydney. And that bridge...wow! If anyones going to Sydney in the future, I'll come with you! It doesn't beat New York but it's definitely up there as one of my favourite places I've been in the world so far.

Next we're off to Melbourne on the last leg of our Australia tour (I can't believe I got here 2 months ago!) but we're it as a 3 day tour where we stop off and see some stuff on the way such as the towns of Lakes Entrance and Jindabyne and travel along a mountain road thats wide enough for one car and with a sheer drop on one side of the bus! Hmm....lets hope we make it to Melbourne!

(oh yeah and my video camera has been fixed...wooooooo! Found some guy who has literally cornered the market in fixing backpackers cameras! Me and Trev both handed money over to him to fix our cameras and everytime I was in there, there was another backpacker with a camera that had got sand lodged in it!)

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