Sydney

First things first, I did promise to comment on the quality of the Guinness on my travels and it has generally been reasonable, but I can happily say the best pint of Guinness in Sydney and my trip so far is in Durty Nelly's in Paddington.As for the rest of our stay in Sydney,it was pretty damn good too; however as I am putting all the Sydney stuff on 1 blog, its quite long so I would make a cup of tea before settling down to read it.

We rolled into Sydney early on a Friday afternoon and had arranged to pick Sinead up from work so she could guide us to her house.Despite her initial shock at the shaved head and slightly slimmer brother that greeted her, we headed off to drop our stuff off and settle into our new accommodation. It was such a relief to know that we had 10 days in the 1 place and no dorms, noisy roommates or early buses to worry about for a little while. Sinead was a very generous host and gave us her bed and she crashed on the floor. Luckily she has a decent sized room so we were able to all fit in without any worries. We were then treated to Sinead/s usual tourist spot…Manly. Apparently she takes everyone there as it's a simple ride across on the ferry to a great little beach town and on the way back you get great views of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. All this for only 3 or 4 dollars on public transport. The next was a Saturday night, it should be no surprise that my priority was to go to the pub…however there was also the small matter of the Heineken Cup Final as well.Sydney isn't short of Irish bars, and thanks to Mick, John and Liam, I had a cursory knowledge of some of the better ones….Sinead however had anencyclopaedic knowledge of all of them so we were well sorted for our night out. We started in PJ O'Brien's and had a few beers there. It was fairly quiet though and it also shut at 2, which meant they weren't showing the rugby. So, under duress, I persuaded the girls to head for Scruffy Murphys - It may be a dive, but it was open for the game and it felt like most of Limerick was in there. A great night in all, but my nerves were fairly shot near the end. Sinead and Emma didn't really notice as they spent most of the time talking about shopping or something J

A lot of what we did in Sydney was simply potter around different parts of the city which doesn't make for the most exciting reading on a blog, however there were some trips and places that we went that really stood out.

Blue Mountains. - We went on a day trip to the Blue Mountains which are just outside of Sydney. It's a 2 hour train journey up the mountain which I would love to talk about but I slept for a large portion of it as it was earlyish in the morning. When you get to Katoomba which is the main town in the area, you can get one of those multi drop tourist buses around the various sites.It's really spectacular up in the mountains and despite the day we went not being great for colour, you can definitely make out the blue tinge in the air. This comes from the oil evaporating from gum trees in the valley. The main highlight in the mountains is a rock formation called the 3 sisters. According to the dreamtime story, the rock are 3 sisters who were turned to stone to prevent them being kidnapped by a wizard. Unfortunately, the wizard killed the man who turned the sisters to stone and they were forever stuck that way. I really enjoy reading some of the dreamtime stories as we go around Oz, some are a bit daft, but a lot of them have some quite ingenious stories and reasons for why things are the way they are. There are walkways all a round the mountains and you can actually walk onto the base of the 1st sister. It's a fairly scary walk though as they have basically just stuck some metal rails straight onto the mountain and it's REALLY steep. The pics were worth it though.I really enjoyed the Blue Mountains and noticed that they have a very European feel to them, having been built as a retreat from the city in much the same way as Darjeeling was in India. As its mainly national park now, the valley is pretty much untouched and the views are spectacular all around.

Bondi-Coogee Walk

Having heard about Bondi beach so much growing up, we couldn't visit Sydney and not go have a look. We decided the best way to do it was the Bondi-Coogee walk which is a really nice coastal walk of about 10Km between the 2 towns. We decided to do it from Coogee to Bondi and the walk itself is really nice, you pass through some little towns as well as an absolutely huge cemetery about halfway called Waverley Cemetery. Now I enjoy a quiet stroll through a cemetery and could have spent ages there, but its not really Emma's thing so I had to satisfy myself with a 20 minute stroll round before setting off again. One of the best things about doing the walk this way is you finish up in Bondi, grab some fish and chips for dinnerand then get the bus back to the city. Bondi is known locally as Co Bondi as it has one of the largest populations of Irish travelers in the town.I did think Coogee was a nicer town as Bondi reminded me of a lot of some UK seaside towns and it's fairly commercial. It's a bit of a letdown when you get to see it as you hear so much about it….maybe I'm being harsh as it was winter, but that's just what I thought when I got there. However, I'm not a surfer so maybe that really is the main attraction.

Hunter Valley

Hunter Valley is the largest wine producing region in New South Wales and is conveniently a 2 hour ride from Sydney. Sinead hadn't been on this before so took the opportunity to join us for some light refreshments.Unfortunately for us, we had a right d*** as our tour guide who thought he was funnier than he was and frankly wasn't much cop as a tour guide. Despite this, we had a good time…that may have something to do with the fact that we were onto our second bottle of wine before lunch!We went to 2 vineyards and had tastings of a selection of there wines while the salesperson talked us through the vineyard history, what food the wine goes with etc etc.These guys more than made up for the tour guide as they were all knowledgeable and interesting. We also had a look behind the scenes at how the wines are pressed, matured and casked.As well as the 2 main vineyards that we went to see with the tour, we also had a chance over a relaxed lunch to check out some of the other places…all of which had free tasters. It's amazing how effective little glasses can be when you have enough of them. The big disappointment of the tour was a chocolate port, which I thought I would love but tasted minging. The highlight was the Verdelho's which both vineyards produced. It's a very easy drinking medium dry white wine that I really liked and will be sure to keep a look out for.

Sydney Harbour Bridge.

The bridge is definitely an icon of Sydney and I took far too many photos of it for Emma's liking. At sunset, dusk, nighttime, daytime, black and white, side on, panorama's from both sides of the river. It was a running joke the amount of photos I took, but it's a genuinely photogenic monument. More importantly for me…there was also the opportunity to climb it. Emma didn't want to climb it, so on a rainy Monday morning, I set out for the bridge on my own. The Sydney Bridge Climb company have been running tours on the bridge for 10 years and have 2 different climbs, I chose the discovery climb which goes through more of the heart of the bridge before popping out at the top. As you can imagine, safety is very important on this climb, not only for the climbers, but the huge amount of cars that use the bridge every day. You aren't allowed to bring anything up on the climb with you and even have to change out of your clothes into a really ugly jumpsuit thing. All jewellery except rings have to be removed and your sunglasses are tied to you. You unfortunately aren't allowed to bring a camera so you can't get pics of anything but you will have to trust me that the views from the bridge are spectacular. Although I'm not always the best with heights, the climb itself is easily done and you feel very confident as you are chained to the bridge at all times by a steel cable. The guides also talk about the history of the bridge as you go along which is really interesting for a fact geek like me. AS I said, it was a rainy Monday morning and what had started out as a light sporadic drizzle in the morning, had developed into a bit of a downpour just in time for me to reach the top of the bridge. As a result my souvenir photo is fairly damp! Despite this, it was a fantastic experience which I would recommend to anyone heading to Sydney (although, be warned it is a bit pricey). Having finished the bridge climb, I walked around the harbor and circular Quay and met Emma in time to go on an Opera House tour.

My first impression of the Opera House when we arrived in Sydney was a little anti climactic. Its such a symbol of Australia, that when you see it in reality its smaller than you think, and rather than a dazzling white that you imagine, it is a slightly off white colour. After a few days though, you start to appreciate it a bit more. It has a character to it during the day as it appears to change colour depending on light conditions and it is pretty large when you actually get close to it. The tour was really interesting and explained a lot about the history, construction and architecture of the building. (For example, the tiles look an off white as they are interspersed with brown tiles to reduce the glare to passing ships from the sun). We did look into going to a show there, but nothing really appealed at the time and it's a bit pricey.

Between the bridge and the opera house, is an area called Circular Quay, which is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. It's a great little part of town, and is a bit like Covent Garden. There are lots of buskers, and entertainers as well as bars and restaurants. All the public transport ferries depart from here as well as a lot of Jet Boats and this was what we had come here to do one afternoon. Sinead once again joined me as she hadn't done it before and me and her strapped in for the ride. Jetboats are frankly a lunatic idea. They use water propulsion to generate power up to 1'000 bhp so go really fast and can turn, stop and spin in a really small space.The drivers of the boats really push them to their limits and you get VERY wet during your trip even with the really unattractive ponchos you are given. We were really lucky on our trip as we were on the last boat of the day and whales had just been spotted in the harbour. As a result, the driver did less of the mad stuff and headed out to Sydney heads for a bit of impromptu whale watching. This was fantastic, we got to see 2 whales and a calf splashing about for about 15 minutes and we absolutely loved it.

As they say when in Rome do as romans do…so it was we found ourselves on a Sunday afternoon heading for the Footy. We went to the match between the Sydney Swans and Richmond Tigers and it was definitely something a bit different. I'd seen some aussie rules before and of course the compromise games, but watching this reminded me a lot of gaelic football (particularly by ulster teams).The game itself wasn't that exciting as Sydney swept into a huge lead in the 1st quarter and then proceeded to potter along for the rest of the match. Richmond had a good 3rd quarter to make it a respectable scoreline, but it was a walkover for Sydney and made for a fairly dull game, particularly for Emma. I had looked up online how long the game lasted and it said 4 quarters of 20 minutes. What it didn't say is that they add on the time for stoppages so in reality they go a lot longer around 30 minutes…..which she wasn't impressed with.One of the weirdest things is at the start and end of the match, they play the club song which is something out of 1930's music hall. (Very odd, and I stuck a video of it on the blog)

That's pretty much all we did in Sydney….except for the shopping, drinking (lots), going cinema, lounging around and frankly a huge amount of other stuff that is probably too boring for everyone at home. I loved our time in Sydney, it was great to hang out with Sinead, to have a base for once, and to have time to explore the city at leisure. However, they do say you are either a Melbourne person or a Sydney person and I'm a Melbourne person, it simply has more character. Sinead thinks I haven't seen Sydney at its best and should see it in the summer, but I doubt I'd change my mind. Having spent our time in Sydney, it was now time to move on up the coast and chase the sun….next stop Byron Bay.