Crowne Plaza Hotel Parramatta-Sydney

... uses and is considerably more versatile... (sunbed / cushion / sun blocker outer / sarong / skirt etc etc)<br>We took a coach to our first stop, mooloolaba... wish we had kept going to be honest, no atmosphere and full of youngsters getting wasted and battling for the free sausage meal! I did make pals with some Aussies and went out on the second evening.. at least I had some form of intelligent conversation over the 48 hours we were there!<br>Next stop was Noosa which we ...

... me at one point when the going got really tough 'We are Churchill Fellows, we don't quit or stop when the going get tough&#8217;. Too true, so we slogged on to a very wet end!<br><br>Hurrah. I ache in places I never thought I had, I need to sleep but am travelling to Canberra today. It&#8217;s a sad farewell to Jenny at the airport as I hobble onto the plane.<br><br>Must buy some painkillers to get me through tomorrow&#8230;.

... Mama&#8230;&#8221;).<br><br>Danach bummelten wir hirnlos (wie immer) durch die Stadt, erfreuten uns noch ein 100.Mal an dem Opernhaus (dieses Mal aus naechster Naehe und nicht durch das Objektiv) und tobten uns schliesslich im Botanic Garden aus durch so manch verrueckte Fotos (wahrscheinlich als Kontrast zum Opernhaus)- die uns wiederum Aufmerksamkeit von anderen Touristen errbrachte (siehe Tourigruppe auf Foto).<br><br>Wir begegneten auch einem besudelten ...

... dogs) and I'm ready to head home. I have enjoyed the cool weather here and I am hoping that when I return back to FL, most of the stinkers (boiling hot days) will be over and that the Fall weather will be just around the corner.<br><br>Our trip was a bewdy (good one) however we aren't ready to move to Oz. While Doug is constantly trying to figure out where would be the ideal place to live, I've come to the conclusion ...

... of ours), a china town, Paddington, Kings Cross (EXACTLY the same as ours) and even a Richmond on the outskirts on the city! All pretty amazing.<br><br>My hostel is located in the heart of Kings Cross which as i said above is pretty much the same as our. It only took me 30 seconds of leaving Kings Cross station to be approached by prositutes and strippers and you could clearly see people dealing drugs etc. Ok so it sounds like a rough and dodgy area but suprisingly it also has some ...

... off. The day started pretty early, we found a stall selling bacon and egg rolls so treated ourselves. We headed back to the hostel and packed up. We took the shuttle back to the airport with Phil who was on the same flight though he was going all the way to the UK. We checked in to find out that we were on one of the new A380's which is the big double decker plane. Pretty cool to be on one as they have only been in service for less than a year. Next stop Singapore.

Greetings from Down Under! We arrived in Sydney very early in the morning after a really turbulent flight! Poor Ian got stuck next to a weird guy who wouldn't stop talking the whole flight... we were feeling really groggy so we checked into our first proper hostel (yes, we're talking bunk beds, shared bathrooms, the whole works!) to grab some sleep! After catching a few zzzzz's we headed into Sydney to see the sights! We were spending a ...

... boozed up. One party was all dressed as pirates (I approve), and one bachelor party had a guy running around the courts in a "mankini", which is the green swimsuit that Borat wears in the movie Borat. This is actually my second encounter in a foreign country with a man wearing a mankini. The first was two years ago when I was in Krakow, Poland when I met a bunch of British guys on their "stag" party (as its known here and in Europe) and proceeded to go out with them ...

... principally because of its gigantic Dinosaur skeletons and the fact that the museum had a BBC Nature Photographic exhibition on there. Some of the photos were fantastic and depressingly showed me up to being the useless photographer that I am. The rest of museum was interesting enough with a floor dedicated to minerals of different kinds (Australia being a big mining country) and also a floor with hundreds of stuffed animals. These might be a ...