So I arrived in Sydney on Thursday and managed to successfully navigate my way (with Mike) to central Sydney. The trains here are double deckers - I was impressed! It's the little things in life...!

Dumped our stuff at the hostel and had a wander round. Quite a nice city, but as you may have noticed from the last rant (sorry, 'blog') I'm growing weary of cities. So after the Opera House, Harbour Bridge and a nip around the Botanical Gardens (full of bats - eek!) we got a ferry over to Manly for a few days. It's only about 20 minutes away, and is a surfers haven. As someone that would sink instantly if faced with deep water - I stayed on dry land and admired from a distance. I also ate ice-cream. Wonderful. (Mint choc chip if you're wondering - and some free hundreds and thousands on top) Woop. Twas lovely and sunny and full of little markets selling pretty, but useless stuff. Our first hostel had cockroaches. They are now engrained on the wall (and the back of my book). It wasn't a difficult decision to move the following morning (to a lovely little house, with free tea!)

Yesterday was spent travelling over to the Blue Mountains, which are about a 2 hour train ride away. Mike and I got up early (difficult as we'd had a couple of drinks with Jon from my old work the previous night...) but after some caffine were ready to face nature. We did a tour, tootling around on a 'replica trolley' (they're not all that good the 2nd time round) with a tour guide who appeared to hate his job. Didn't understand a word he was saying - so took to making it up. It made it all the more interesting! Anyway, the mountains were pretty cool - went on a gonola type contraption and the worlds steepest inclined railway (52 degrees) - all very nice and touristy!

It's our last day in Sydney today, we're hoping to jump on a bus for a 5 day trip up to Brisbane in the morning. It's only about 18 degrees here (only - haha) so hoping for some warmer weather oop north!

Hope all is well back home. Saw some British news this morning - how no-one is ready for swine flu should an outbreak occur! Lovely. Makes me almost miss home. Oh wait. Nope, I'm lying. Stay inside, buy a face mask - you'll all be grand.

Love and stuff xx