18th May 2009

We picked our hire car up at half 10 this morning, we got a free upgrade so instead of having another Tina the Tart, we got Bruce, a Mitsubishi Lanza, an automatic with cruise control which made the drive alot easier and more comfortable!! Once we found our way out of the city it was a pretty easy drive. One main stretch of road, hardly any cars and the weather was lush (typical with us being in a car for the whole day!). We only paid for Mike to be insured as there is an extra surcharge with us both being under 25 so its alot cheaper, but I drove out on the main roads as its really unlikely to get stopped by the coppers.

We passed through a couple of small towns along the way and after driving about 500k and 6 hours, we stopped in a much larger town called 'Wagga Wagga (what a great name for a town, lol!). We stayed at Romano's Hotel, which was in our lonely planet book (yes we managed to save it, although its about 3 times the size and doesnt look much like a book anymore!). The hotel was basic but nice, we even had an electric blanket in our bed which was so so good! By the time we arrived it was fairly late and we were both knackered so we stayed in the bar and had 2 for 1 pizzas which were
really good. There were a few fruit machines so we spent a fiver in there before catching an early night.