Sydney continued & best NYE ever!

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Trip Start Nov 26, 2009 Previous
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  Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Saturday, January 2, 2010

Well, after struggling up a hundred or so stairs with our backpacks, we finally made it to the Sydney Harbour YHA. The climb was definitely worth it, as it's probably got the best location of any hostel I've been to so far! Right in the historic Rocks area of the city, it has a massive roof terrace which overlooks the harbour, including amazing views of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. It's only been open a couple of months so is still nice and clean and new-smelling. Sadly no bar, but on the plus side it means you can bring your own alcohol in! All about saving the pennies lol.

We were pretty hungry by then as it was about half two and we hadn't had any lunch, so we went for a wander around the Rocks and came across a little cafe I went to last time I was here. They do amazing burgers for between $6 and $8 - absolute bargain! They are really tasty too - maybe even rivalling the mighty Fergburger in Queenstown (they do burgers that are about the size of my head for $10. Everyone who stays in Queenstown gets at least one while they're there!) Just across the road from the cafe was a Guylian Chocolate cafe - all my chocolate dreams are coming true in this city! First Lindt cafe, now Guylian! Bought myself a seashell chocolate bar and Jamie got an individual seashell chocolate. I'm planning on going back today to get some chocolates for our overnight bus trip tonight!

We wandered around the harbour and went right under the bridge which looks rather cool from underneath, layers and layers of steel arches! We had signed up for a $10 steak dinner at a local pub called the Glenmore (where I ate lunch after I climbed the bridge four years ago - very bizarre to be going back to the same places after all this time!) and then we planned to get the free shuttle bus down to Scubar, the bar at Sydney Central In typical us fashion, we never went there when we were staying at Sydney Central, but the day we check out and move to a hostel 30 mins walk away, we decide to go there! The dinner was really tasty, massive bit of steak, chunky chips and a really nice salad. We ate up on the roof terrace as well which was nice - views of the city and Opera House, and (randomly) bats flying around overhead. Apparently they nest in the Botanical Gardens nearby. We met a nice guy called Mark who had just been travelling through Asia, so he gave us lots of tips and advice on where to go and what to do. We thought there would be a few more travellers at the meal but it was mostly the hostel staff! Food took rather a long time to come out so we ended up missing the shuttle bus and had to walk down to the bar. Got to Scubar about 9.30pm, just in time to watch the last of the 'famous' crab races they do on Mondays. There was a massive queue to get in but luckily we had q jump! Absolutely packed inside though, had to literally fight your way through people to get to the bar! I thought the crab racing would be three or four big crabs racing along, but they just had about 20 tiny crabs in shells, most of them didn't even emerge from their shells for the whole race! Three or four braved it and scuttled towards the edge of the platform, the fastest one being the winner! Very random but fun all the same.

The next day we headed down to the Greyhound office to book our bus up to Byron Bay, then had some lunch up on the roof terrace. It's so nice up there I could have easily spent the whole afternoon sunning myself and taking in the views! But we had more to explore so we walked over the harbour bridge and went to see Luna Park on the other side. It's a really old-fashioned fun fair, with crazy people in costumes walking around everywhere. Didn't go on any rides though as they were all $10 each - a tad expensive methinks!

That evening we had a $5 BBQ on the roof terrace with hot dogs, salad and free drink. Tried a bit of Kangaroo steak too - tastes a lot like beef but a bit more chewy. Jamie loved it and had a kangaroo hot dog! Left the BBQ quite early as we had tickets to see 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' at the Moonlight Cinema. It's an outdoor cinema in Centennial Park, so luckily it was a really nice evening with no rain! Bit of a palaver getting there, as when we got off the bus we asked a taxi driver for directions and he pointed us in the opposite direction to where we wanted to go! So ended up taking us 25 mins to get there instead of 5. But we made it just in time and didn't miss anything. It was so much fun, just sitting on the grass, eating strawberries, watching one of my favourite films ever, while the sun sets behind the screen and stars twinkled above us. One of my favourite evenings so far I think!

On the 30th we got the train up to the Blue Mountains which turned out to be a bit of a rubbish day. I only thought the train took an hour so we caught the 10.18am - in fact it took two hours and was packed, so by the time we got to Katoomba, queued up and bought our hop on-hop off trolley bus tickets and waited for the first bus (retardedly they only come once an hour) it was already 1.30pm. Our first stop was Echo Point whic is the lookout point for the Three Sisters rock formation. It's really pretty and the scenery all around was spectacular. We stayed there for a while taking photos and having some lunch, then waited for the bus. It turned up 10 mins late, so by the time we got to the next stop (Skyway station) we were behind two packed buses, so we had to join an enormous queue for the cable ride across the valley. We weren't even that fussed about going on it, but felt we had to as we had paid for it as part of our ticket package. So we queued for half an hour for that, which lasted about 2 and a half minutes. We then had to get the scenic railway down to the valley floor where I wanted to do a rainforest walk. The railway is pretty cool as it's the steepest in the world, practically vertical. But again we had to queue for 20-odd minutes, and we were told the queue to come back up on the cable car (which was also part of our package) was around half an hour too. Because we had planned to get the bus round to a waterfall after, to do a one hour walk, we just did a quick 10 minute walk at the bottom before queueing back up for the cable car. So hardly got to see any of the rainforest, which was a shame. By the time we got back up we knew there wouldn't be time to do our waterfall walk, as we would miss the last bus back to town. So we decided to head to a little village called Leura for a cream tea at a little place we had a voucher for. Sounded pretty cool, as they have loads of antique teapots all around it and serve proper scones with jam and cream. But the bus we wanted to catch didn't turn up at all, and we had to wait 45 minutes until one arrived. By the time they dropped us off at the tea place it had already closed :-(. So we were stuck in this tiny village where everything had closed for the day and had to wait 40 mins for the train. And just to top it all off, Leura is the next station down from Katoomba, the main one, so there were no seats left and we had to squish on the floor for the two hour ride back. Very disappointing as we didn't go on any walks, saw hardly any of the scenery and spent all our time queueing for Scenic World rides (if you're going there in summer, steer clear of Scenic World!) and waiting for the bus.

New Year's Eve was a much much better day! We met up with a group of people we travelled with in New Zealand about 11am and headed to Observatory Hill, a park right next to our hostel. We were going to be watching the fireworks from our roof terrace but they were all watching from the park so we got there early to claim a good spot. Had a great view of the bridge and we spent most of the day hanging out there. Wasn't the blistering sunshine I had hoped for, but it brightened up a lot in the afternoon and we managed to get a bit of a tan! It was nice knowing we didn't have to stay there, as we could go back to our hostel to have lunch, make a nice dinner, go to the loo etc. We watched the 9pm fireworks from the park which were great. Then headed up to the roof about 10pm to get a good spot. I thought it would be packed and we would have trouble getting a good view, but it was great. Almost everyone had a spot at the side and we managed to get a great one with amazing views of the Opera House and side-on views of the bridge and city skyscrapers. They also had free champagne and crisps and dips up there which were very nice indeed. We went up with our room mates, Ted and Kimberley so just chatted to them most of the night. The fireworks were absolutely amazing, the best fireworks I've ever seen! They all went off from behind the Opera House so we had one of the best views possible! We could also see all the ones coming off the bridge and off the tops of the skyscrapers. They lasted for about 15-20 minutes as well so I got lots of videos which I'll try and put up. Was definitely the best New Years Eve I've ever had!

Yesterday we had a lie in and then headed down to Bondi beach. The weather was very hot and humid, but we decided to do the coastal walk to Coogee anyway. The walk was really great, beautiful views of all the different beaches, and it was nice to be able to stop at each beach and chill out for a bit. Was nice to have a paddle as well to cool ourselves down!

Last day in Sydney today - weather is looking very nice outside so not sure what I'm doing in here on the internet! Got a 13 hour overnight coach trip to look forward to this evening, hopefully I can sleep through most of it!

Love Laura and Jamie xxx

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New Years Eve with the Kiwi gang

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