Sydney - Pt 2

Well firstly I should apologise for the length of time it has taken for an update to the blog. We are now firmly in place in Melbourne but it has been a manic few days and now is the first time that I've had a chance to sit down and write a few words down. (The others are still asleep at this point).

I guess I should start back with Sydney. That seems such a long time ago now but it was only a week! Rich started things off pretty well with telling you what was going on but i'll finnish things off with the highlights of the rest of our stay there. After a couple of days living in the van in a national park in the outskirts we moved into a hostel for a couple of days to be closer to the city at night. That in itself was a challange as although the hostel had offered free parking the van was too tall to get into the carpark so we pretty much had to empty it and park it down a side street a 3km away and hope it was going to be there when we came back to it.

I think the highlight for us was our first night staying in the middle of Sydney. We decided on a trip to the opera!! For me this was the first time i've ever seen an opera and I guess there is no better place than to see it at the Sydney Opera House. We had heard there was a student offer of top price seats for cheap prices if you turned up half an hour before the performance. So off we went in our best t-shirts and cargo trousers (I felt so out of place!!!) and managed to pick up 3 top price tickets bang in the middle in the 3rd row of the circle for $50 each. The full value of each ticket was $250 and that is certainly what the very well dressed people next to me had paid. The opera was a tad long at 4 hours but very enjoyable. The set was amazing and the drama was very well done too.

We of course ticked all the boxes for tourist activities in Sydney. We took a trip up the Sydney tower wich does as promised offer some spectacular views over the city. The ticket comes with a rather random simulator tour of Australia with it. We also took a trip down to Darling Harbour which is the location of the Sydney Aquarium. I have been to a few aquariums, and this was certainly one of the better ones. It had huge oceanariums moored in the harbour which contained a huge number of sharks and other sea life which you could see from seabed level by walking through glass tunnels. After the Aquarium darling harbour is a perfect place to have some dinner on the promenade round the harbour which offers a perfect view of central Sydney lit up at night.

Well there is obviously more I could say about the place but I think i'll keep this one short. We realise we're a little behind on the photo front at the moment but we've come up against computers that don't allow you to upload anything so that'll have to wait until we get to New Zealand. Apologies for that!!

Chris