Hello Australia
Trip Start
Mar 18, 2007
1
50
101
Trip End
Mar 16, 2008
Sydney,
Australia
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
So far we have been having a brilliant time in Australia and I love Sydney! Although this is certainly due to the kindness of Tom's friends Rebecca and Ryan who have let us stay in their beautiful flat, fed us like kings, acted as tourist information and generally put up with our scruffy backpacker ways.
Last week we took a ferry across the harbour and went right past the Opera House and the Harbour bridge which for me is absolutely amazing after seeing them so many times on tv, infact I still can't quite believe it.
At the weekend Rebecca and Ryan hired a car and we went up to Palm beach (the beach in home and away) and even stood outside Alf's surf shack
Blue Mountains
. On Sunday we went to the beautiful Hunter Valley, where I have to admit the highlight for me was a visit to a cheese factory including muchos tasting, mmmmm. Afterwards we felt obliged to buy a few things and had a wonderful impromptu picnic outside in the sunshine.
The next week we also took a tour round the interior of the Opera House which was really interesting, and we learned all about the design even down to the number of tiles on the roof!
As a cheap version to the Harbour Bridge climb, we went up one of the pylons at the end of the bridge which had a museum at the top. The views from the top were brilliant, although we learned that in the 70's there was a performing cat show at the top, now that must have been something!
Unfortunately we didn't make it to Bondi, but we did manage to get to the gorgeous Blue mountains. The Blue Mountains are very easy to get to from Sydney, as you can just hop on the train and in two hours you are there all for less than 10 pounds round trip. As hopefully you can see from some of the pictures, the views are pretty stunning. There are lots of walks around the area, and on the first day we took a cliff top walk to take in the scenery. The following day we went down the giant staircase (900 steps!), walked along the valley floor before cheating by getting the world's steepest railway back up to the top (boy it was steep...vertical!). So if you find yourself in Sydney I certainly recommend a trip out.
Bye for now.
