Melbourne / Sydney

  Sydney, Australia
Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Hello again, it's seems so long since the last update!

We arrived in Melbourne after a very bumpy flight, the weather so far has been great but there are millions of flies everywhere. They swarm around your face and like to do a kamakazi in to your ear hole!!! Not nice at all. We have adopted the Australian Wave very quickly.






We are staying at the Greenhouse Backpackers. It's right downtown and is one of the best yet. Melbourne is very cool and it reminds us of Vancouver. We spent the first few days exploring and sorting out our travel and accommodation plans as they have somewhat changed.



The city has the Yarra River running through it, so we took a water taxi to various places of interest.



The aquarium is quite good and worth a visit. They have massive rays and numerous large sharks which you can even dive with, but we are hoping to dive with wild ones in a couple of weeks.....more about this later!!!!





The city centre is quite small and is getting ready for Christmas with lots of huge decorations dotted around. The whole place has a great feel to it and some interesting characters like this guy!!!!



He is 72, stands on stilts and hula-hoops all day for change. He was shot fifty years ago in the leg during the Korean war and for a little extra cash he will show you...we declined the offer.

One of the main area's is Federation Square, it cost over 400 million dollars to build and is close to Flinders Street train station.



This is Flinders Station at night...quite beautiful for a building that is!!!!



We spent 5 days in Melbourne and enjoyed every minute, being a small city it was very easy to feel right at home.

As it is nearly Christmas, we have put a couple of seasonal pics in for you.

This is the tree at Federation Square!



After an early start and a short flight we arrived in Sydney. We will be here for two weeks over Christmas. Our hostel is something else......not in a good way!!!

The weather is quite a few degrees warmer than Melbourne and on the first day we took a stroll downtown to Circular Quay.



Both the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House are situated here. The first thing that strikes you is how small the Opera House is....you imagine it to be much larger.



It has around 1000 rooms inside so it's quite deceiving.

The bridge on the other hand is huge!!!!



Built in the 30's it joins North Sydney to the central business district.

After a couple of days here we met up with Del and Sophie. We met them in New Zealand and they are living over here near Bondi Beach.



This is the world famous Bondi Beach. Normally you would be fighting for elbow room but Australia has recently experienced a few racial problems and the beaches around Sydney are very quiet. It is such a shame. We hope all will be reconciled over the next few weeks. After a few mandatory beers with Del and Sophie we headed into the city for a few more.

We ended up watching a really pants band called WILDCATZ....the clue is in the name. So we invented the Wildcatz dance.



During one of the breaks, we managed to talk a drunk girl into playing a game of poke the Wildcat....the base player found it funny the first two times then started getting really annoyed as the poking intensified. We were falling around laughing.

Another area of Sydney is Darling Harbour. This is a major waterside development, full of bars, restaurants and nightclubs.



There is one thing we haven't mentioned yet and that is that Sydney has massive shopping malls on every street. There are hundreds of them, if your into shopping this is the place for you.

We have been here 4 days now and we took a harbour cruise around the many bays. Here are few pictures of Sydney from the water!





We have another 10 days here and there is still so much to see and do.

A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you!!!

We will leave you for now with a picture of Sydney Town Hall. At night they use a projector to paint it all seasonal!!!!