G'day everyone!!

Well I've been in Sydney for 3 days (today is my 4th but I'm leaving tonight!!) and have taken over 300 photos! Whoops! Had a brilliant time, although wish I could have another few days!!

So I arrived on Saturday evening, after a 12 hour bus journey! It actually wasn't as bad as it sounds! We only had 7 people on a big bus so managed to spread out and have a couple of naps! Stopped off at lunch at a place that has won awards for their pies (which are basically the aussie national food) and I can understand why! They have over 50 different fillings each day and I had the steak and onion!! Yummy!! We were very lucky as the day before, a huge concrete block had fallen off a truck and blocked the main road into Sydney that we went on! It still hadn't been moved when we went past but they had sorted out a diversion! The people travelling the day before were stuck for 6 hours!! Once I had checked in at the hostel, I headed out to try and find a pub with the cricket on!! Luckily, Australia thinks 24hr pubs are the way forward and found one really quickly!! Watched the whole match, and met some really nice locals who invited me to join them!! Shame about the score, but had a nice evening in all!!

Ok so, Day 1 of Sydney I spent wandering around the harbour! My hostel is about 3 or 4 km away from the harbour so wandered down their via one of the main streets! Recognised a few places from 3 years ago which was a bit strange! Once I got down to the harbour, I walked to the Opera house for a few photos, then back to the main quay! I booked a boat cruise around the harbour and then took a walk away from the opera house under the bridge!! Even though I had seen it before it's still pretty spectacular!! Unfortunately it was raining on and off all day so I kept having to duck under trees or in shops!! Luckily, once I was on the boat, the rian stopped and at the end we even saw the sun for a bit!! The boat cruise lasted about an hour and we headed up the river towards Manly (but not that far) and the back, under the bridge before docking back at Circular Quay (the main docks)! It was really nice, although had some random tourists that when I asked them to take a photo for me, decided to get in one picture with me!! Anyway, once I was off the boat, it was perfect timing for the start of the F1, which was being played on a giant screen just beside the quay!! Apart from one quick downpour, the rain held off and I watched the race under the sun!!

I headed over to the Olympic Park on Day 2! I caught the train there, and had a slight sense of deja vu as it was very similar to the Kuala Lumpur station! Luckily, that is where the similarities ended! Even though I arrived to rain, the whole park was quite busy and looked very well kept!! After a quick stop at the visitors centre, I headed over to one of the hotels! This hotel allows people up to the 17th floor to look out on two balconies, at opposite ends, over the entire park! Its a huge park, with plenty of structure as well as plenty of green land around! Once my feet were firmly back on the ground, I went over to a small grass area opposite the main stadium called the Cathy Freeman Park! They literally worship her here, and they have a 100m concrete path in the park, which has lights where her footsteps were on the final 100m of her gold medal winning race! In the evening, these lights light up one at a time, as though she was running it! Within the park, they also have the tower that they used for the flame! At the base, they have all the names of the medal winner, each engraved on different colours (gold for gold medals, etc) with their names, countries and sports! Great Britain had a decent amount although the majority came from the Paraolympics!
I then headed over to the main stadium, currently called the ANZ stadium and went for a tour! I was lucky enough that I was the only one so I infact got a personal tour! Firstly we headed down to ground zero, which is where they have the road under the stadium we walked past the blue line, which in 2000 was used for the long distance walking event! The guide showed me the corner where one of the competitors (who was winning with a 3km lead) got DQ'd coming into the stadium! We then headed up and looked over the stadium from level 4! As the guide knew I was a rugby fan, the first thing she did, was point out the 'Jonny Wilkinson' end!! Its a very impressive stadium, but has changed loads since the olympics! For the Olympics, it held 110,000 and it has now changed to 83,500! The two 'goal' ends, have been completely rebuilt with a roof now over the top of the stands! The running track was taken out shortly after the games to allow spectators to be closer to the action (interesting concept considering 2012!)! However, the two side stands can be move back and forth by about 15/20m to allow for AFL matches! At the moment, the ground is used for rugby league, rugby union, football, afl and cricket! We then headed along to a corporate box! Most companies have these year on year and I got to see the Coca-Cola one! It was very impressive, with their own chef and waitresses on game days! Each box can apply for 40 tickets for each game and they also have use of it any other time for meetings etc!! Not bad eh?! After this, we headed to the media rooms, which to be fair were pretty small! This is also where the video ref would be sat! It was completely empty when we went as obviously there are loads of radio stations/tv stations that use this every year and it wouldn't work to keep some equipment there constantly! Next we headed to the changing rooms, but not just any changing room- the one the england team used in the 2003 world cup final!! To get there we walked through a warm up area, which was actually used as the drug testing room in the Olympics! The main thing with the changing rooms and warm up areas are they are all very dull with grey paint! This is because, it is the only colour that is not used in any New South Wales teams! Before any match, the teams will come in and decorate their space with their own colours and banners, etc! After a quick look around the changing room, (including the ice bath) we walked out through the tunnel onto the ground!! You can easily understand how it is such a great stadium!! I also got to stand on the medal podium that was actually used in the Olympics!! Shame I couldn't get the national anthem playing!!
As I headed out of the stadium, there were hundreds of metal poles which were engraved with the names of some of the thousands of volunteers that were involved in the games! They also had a gold and green post, one with the names of the Aussie Olympic team and the other with the names of the Paraolympic team! The tallest pole was white with markings on to show the gold medal high jump and pole vault! The out from the bottom, was a white line with markings of the long/triple jumps! Obviously the longest mark being our very own Jonathon Edwards!!
I then took a walk around some of the park, and I got to see the Athletic Stadium that they use now for competitions, the warm up area, the hockey stadium, the sport centre (for judo, badminton, etc) and finally the Aquatic Centre! This is probably the most used stadium in the park and I got to use the leisure pool and the 50m training pool as well!! I have to admit that the pool wasn't as impressive as the KL one but it was still very good!! The main pool and diving area have seating on either side and its a 10 lane 50m pool and the diving area has plenty of boards!! While I was there, both were in use by kids training, some of which were amazing, especially the divers (watch out Tom Daley!!) You can see how they produce such good swimmers though, each lane had a maximum of 4 swimmers and every 2 lanes had a different coach, who was constantly timing them and recording scores!! Very impressive!!
I headed back to Circular Quays on a boat and got to see the skyline and bridge at night!! It was absolutely stunning and the north Sydney is almost as impressive as the south (south being where the majority of the touristy parts are!) Unfortunately my camera isn't quite good enough to capture the images so it gives you all a good excuse to come out and see it yourself- trust me its worth the journey!!

Ok, so finally Day 3 and I went and visited the Blue Mountains! Unfortunately its name is a bit of a lie, as although there are a couple of points which are technically mountains, the majority isn't! Its a completely natural formation which has evolved over thousands of years and is pretty beautiful! After an early morning pick up and a quick stop at a park for biscuits and juice, we went into the national park to try and find some wild kangeroos! Unfortunately, they were a bit shy that day, however we did see plenty of cookaburras and one huge lizard!! We only spotted him as we were heading back to the bus, but he started to climb a tree and we got some good pictures!!
It was then onto Flat Rock which over looks the Jamison Valley!! There were actually people doing a car commercial up on the rock when we arrived so to start with we couldn't see the whole valley but just before we left, they allowed us to! It was an amazing view and luckily we had brilliant weather so visibility was the best we could ask for!! The majority of the valley is sandstone and from the flat rock you can see all the different types forming lines in the rock!
Our next stopwas Wentworth Falls which you can see best if you access it via 230 steps, not too many when you are going down them, waaayy too many coming back up!! The falls are actually some of the biggest in the world, however only in a sense of the drop, not the width of the falls of the volume of water!! Still very impressive though!! After a quick lunch stop, we headed over to a place called the Scenic Village! Here we got the 'Skyline' cable car across the valley and got to see another waterfall, as well as getting the first view of the Three Sisters! This is a rock formation of three rocks, but there are plenty of Aboriginal stories about why they are there!! You can see them in the picture for this blog!! We then got the worlds steepest railway down to the forest!! The steepest incline is 52 degrees and when you get in, it feels as though you are lying down!! A few of us joked that it looked like a ride from Alton Towers!! Luckily it wasn't quite like that! We then had a quick walk around the forest and saw some amazing nature, for example, a tree that had been hit by lightning and the entire core had been burnt out, or two trees that were completely separate but had intertwined themselves around each other!! Then it was time for the cable car back up to the top!! This time we got to see the Orphaned Rock which as you can probably guess is named because it is sat by itself opposite the three sisters!!
Our final stop was where a kangeroo had been carved into the rocks by Aboriginal people! It was actually quite realistic but I'm not sure how authentic it was! It was on a flat rock facing towards the sky with no covering and after hearing how the entire Blue Mountains hae changed over time with weather, it would be very impressive if that had stayed perfectly carved for so long!! But many I was just tired!!
The day ended with another boat cruise, this time at sunset which was very nice!! Got to see Darling Harbour and listened to a few people behind me wondering if a random white building was the Opera House!! Very hard not to laugh out loud!! Also went past some amazing houses on the harbour!! Oh too be rich and famous!!

Anyway, so that pretty much sums up Sydney!! Had a lovely time but gonna need to come back and see more!! Lovely day today and I've got about 5 hours before I catch my bus to the airport so I think I'm gonna head out to a near by park and catch some rays!!

Sending lots of Olympic love

xxxx