So after 10 days of driving all the way from Adelaide we have finally made it to Sydney; where the British first established themselves when they invaded Australia.

First we had to travel from one side of Sydney to the other. We have booked ourselves into a hostel called Base (a hostel franchise). We heard it was a good hostel, and we picked this one because of its central location in the city. Thankfully, our journey from one end of the city to the other wasn't so painful, it was really easy actually. We went to the underground to catch the train which essentially dropped us outside of our hostel, ideal! Especially as we are lugging our 'beloved' backpacks again.

At reception we found that we booked ourselves into a four bedroom dorm, super happy about this. Our room was really nice actually, newly decorated, new beds, carpets, ensuite etc. Sadly though, our room was right above the hostel bar/club! I swear our room must have been right above their speaker, the room literally rattled at times until 3am. I couldn't stand the cr*p that they were playing half the time and decided that if I was going to be kept up until the early hours I may as well listen to my music, so I spent each night with my headphones in. It's no secret that Emily can sleep through anything, so she didn't have any issues with the music. We did find her kryptonite however, it turns out what you need to wake or keep Emily awake is a scouser for a dorm mate who has the most outrageous snoring. I don't think we even got this guy's name, he was a bit of a douche bag and thankfully spent most of his time out. In fact, he spent a serious amount of time out, I'm sure he only stayed in that bed twice during the whole time we were there. Our other dorm mate, Amy wasn't too bad. She was a proper happy go lucky, ditsy girl who over pronounced her "S's". She said she was from Portsmouth but she would have been perfect for a series of TOWIE. We only saw her in small doses because she has friends whom live here. I think this was a good thing, because that thing she does with "S's", like "Eths", was super annoying. And she slept like Dracula, it was kind of scary.

Sydney is a very busy place, I suppose that comes as no surprise given that it's the county's capital city. It was kind of hard to like Sydney at first. I suppose the best thing about it was there was some heritage to it, some of the buildings have been here for a while. But other than that, the people were noticeably rude, and Chinese, there may actually be some correlation to this. The streets made no sense, it was much harder to find your way around the chaotic pattern laid down by the settlers here than the logical grid systems adopted by Melbourne and Adelaide.

While we were in the hostel we went out a few times with some friends we met in Vietnam (Olivia and Harriet). This wasn't really a surprise, we knew that they were going to be at this hostel after we shared our travel plans with each other one night in Vietnam. We've all decided that we will be going to the Botanical gardens to watch the fireworks over NYE, just across the way from the Opera house and Harbour Bridge. One good thing about Sydney is the shopping. For a change I decided to act how Emily does when we go shopping. I spent 2 hours looking for a shirt that: 1. I liked: 2. Fit me: 3. Was a reasonable price. Couldn't believe how difficult this was; I suppose it didn't help that the Australians have a different sense of fashion. Eventually, I did what a lot of women do and went for the first shirt I tried on first 2 hours ago…..revenge is sweet and I hope that we now have a mutual understanding of how boring shopping can be. The funny thing is, I didn't even wear the shirt in the end and to this day (21/04/2015) I still haven't even taken the tag off of it.

So skipping to NYE we set off for the Botanical gardens at 07:00. I just want it to go on record that I was saying we should go earlier, and when we got there it was (as I expected) rammo! Most of the keenos had started queuing the night before. I'm not saying we should have queued overnight, but I just don't think the other girls have actually had to wake up early before because they couldn't stop talking about how early it was etc. (we didn't even leave on time!), thankfully they stopped jabbering on about that when they saw the queue we joined onto, which to be fair was nothing compared to what it ended up being later. The gates opened at 11:00 and we raced over to find a good spot. This was extremely difficult, but we saw the tiniest patch of green grass between groups of people and settled in, slowly encroaching onto "their land" so we could at least get comfortable. Although, we never really got comfortable sitting on such a steep hill. Our location though had one of the best views, just next to where all the news crews film the New Year's festivities, essentially the view you see of the fireworks in Sydney each year on your TV's. Even though, at first our surrounding neighbours were initially pissed off with us after we rudely established our presence (and to be fair I completely understand, but if it wasn't us it would have been someone else), they eventually came around and we actually had a decent group of people to chill with which helped to pass the time.

There were a few shows on to keep us entertained i.e. boat parades, stunt planes, light shows etc. but after 14 hours of waiting we finally got some fireworks at 21:00. This was essentially the kiddies fireworks show, but to be fair it was already the best firework show I'd seen. I should also mention that we had actually managed to get right up against the fence with no one else in front of us, so no interrupted views. We'd played this very well considering we didn't queue up all night for this, unlucky to those who did. Probably sharing too much information here, but it was a significant episode in my evening; I was basically dying to go to the toilet even before the kid's fireworks; I couldn't exactly leave this spot because there would be no way of me getting back, so I had to pee through the fence….naahhhh only joking, I held on until about 00:45 after queueing behind so many people at the toilets and just before the point where my bladder would rupture.

Ten seconds to go and we all started our countdown to the new year as right on time the first firework launched itself into the sky before erupting. The NYE fireworks were even more spectacular than the warm up show, absolutely astounding. It was truly magical gazing up at the sky as it was lit up and sparkled with the fireworks that criss crossed and danced with each other in the sky. The noise was phenomenal; you could literally feel each bang inside your body. Some of the larger fireworks which I can only describe as nuclear fireworks would light the entire city up as if it were day again, before the sound shortly made its way over and struck us with an all mighty bang that could be felt by every bone in the body. Wooow, I thought, we waited 17 hours for this, 20 minutes of fireworks. I still can't decide if the wait was worth it, but we both agreed that we wouldn't do it again and would instead pay to go on one of the boats that sit in the harbour and have dinner etc. Everyone was so tired from all the waiting around that we actually went back to our hostels instead of going out, and in fairness we started our celebrating at 13:00 when they started selling alcohol inside the gardens.

Over our next few days in the city we finally got around to all the site seeing, doing what every other tourist does. We did much of this with our new dorm buddy that replaced Dracula, Euross. Euross (pronounced A-Ross) is a farmer from Wales. He's taken a few weeks off during the winter, presumably there isn't much for a farmer to do in winter. We actually became good friends, and still keep in contact with him regularly now. I think we were bad influences on each other for fast food and drinking, much to Emily's annoyance as she wanted to eat healthy foods. We saw the Opera house, of course, where at some point we had the set the Go Pro up on the tripod to take a cheesy video before it got knocked over by some Japanese guy. The replay of this video was golden, he had no idea what to do, tried to put it back up before it fell over again all while his friends we laughing at him. It was funny, but I did feel sorry for him as he was quite obviously embarrassed. We went to the Harbour and climbed one of the pylons to the top, went to the art museum, saw the botanical gardens again minus the thousands of people there, went to darling harbour, went to the sky tower and chilled at the observatory which overlooks the city. This was a nice little spot, not many people actually know about it.

While we were sitting at the Observatory there was some kind of wedding thing going on behind us. We thought they were just taking pictures until the civil servant came over and asked Emily if she could be the witnessing signature on their marriage certificate. Well this doesn't happen every day, so I grabbed the camera and headed over after her to take a quick picture, not even putting my shoes on. I then found myself being asked to act as the best man and sign on behalf of the groom as a witnessing signature. What the hell is happening here! This couple had got married with no friends or family present and had to take in a couple of strangers to witness their signatures. So Emily is looking fairly presentable, but here I am in a Bob Marley t-shirt with no shoes on, acting as the best man for a groom I don't even know. Euross found this hilarious as he watched from the side lines. We signed some paper work, had some wedding pictures taken with the happy couple and in return were treated to some very fine Champagne, wasted on me because I can't stand the stuff but I drank it to be polite while we chatted away to them.

Apart from chilling at Hyde Park every once in a while, that pretty much sums up our time in Sydney, well in the city centre anyway. While we were in Thailand we met Nik; a lovely Australian babe whom lives in Coogee Bay. Nik was great, and offered us a place to stay for a week for which we cannot thank her enough…..thank you again Nik if you're reading this. Coogee is where you're supposed to go for a decent beach, not Bondi beach which is completely overrated. Coogee is a little suburb 5 miles from Sydney, only taking about half an hour on the bus to get to. Niks flat is ideally located next to the beach, only about a 2 minute walk, but more importantly the bottleshop is only across the road, so your beers are still ice cold by the time you get home. Our time here basically consisted of going to the beach, eating out, drinking out, and drinking in. Our last night in Sydney we went to a posh bar which sits on the beachfront. We sat on the rooftop bar for some time, it started off sunny but eventually some rain had set in….typical. We then moved onto another bar not too far where Euross joined us for our last night, he's been sitting around waiting to leave for his 5 week trip he had planned up the east coast. That completed our time in Sydney, we woke up the next day and left for the airport where we got a plane back to Melbourne. We got a great first impression from the city and wanted to see more of it and try out living there for a while :).

C & E x