Jess-Sydney/Byron Bay!

Hi everyone!

Once again can take advantage of the free internet to update the blog. Firstly thanks for all of Nicole and I's birthday messages, much appreciated!

After a long flight to Sydney stuck between 2 French men with BO I arrived at Sydney to be reunited with the other 3, and once I'd revelled in the luxury of our dorm at YHA Central we went to the bar next door for a few drinks.

The next morning we got the ferry across to Manly from Circular Quay, where I spent about half an hour jumping up and down going "it's the Opera House, its the Opera House!" At Manly, which is a pretty coastal suburb of Sydney we did the Manly Scenic Walkway which is a 10km hike across the beach and bush. It was pretty warm for winter so we were in sundresses and shorts. The walk was so much fun except for one tough part where there were miles of rocky steps that made us sweat. Nicole, Ayesha and I devised this motivational tool of saying "bikini" everytime we climbed stairs because we knew how toned we would look in our bikinis later lol. the walk took about 3.5 hrs then we had dinner at the restaurant in Manly before getting the ferry back. We went out to the bars again that night and the next day I had a horrible hangover/migraine :(

The next day was Nicole's birthday so we took a picnic to the Royal Botanical Gardens which is next to the Opera House and walked out to Mrs Macquaries point. That evening we went to an awesome restaurant in Kings Cross called Govinda's which is an all you can eat Indian buffet follwed by a film which you watch on these really cool sofas. We watched 21 but Ayesha slept the entire way through it!

On wednesday we went to Coogee Beach to meet my friend Rob for lunch. It was a really pretty place and it was lovely to see Rob again. Randomly as we were sitting down at lunch I saw a girl from my halls at uni called Holly who moved to Oz after uni so that was very random but nice! After that we had some retail therapy and then had quite a chilled night doing laundry and playing cards.

On my birthday Nicole and I did the Bridge Climb, a 3 hr climb that takes you to the top of the Harbour Bridge. It was so much fun, with incredible views and the people in our group were cool-a dad and son from barbados, a mum and her 2 sons from Melton Mowbray and a dad and his daughter from Holland. Once we had climbed we met Ayesha and Matt for cheesecaeke (see the other blog) and watched the Pope arrive into Sydney Harbour. It was national youth day, so there were 500,000 catholic teenagers from across the globe wandering around sydney wearing bright orange backpacks during our time there. I was tempted by a tshirt saying I heart the Pope but I managed to resist! For my birthday treat we went to a theme park called Luna Park which was small but empty and really fun, we did 8 rides in 2hrs for about 24quid so pretty good value. That night we got our greyhound bus to Byron Bay which is 12hrs long. It was ok, just long, boring and slightly uncomfortable.

Our arrival in Byron Bay was slightly hindered by my idiotic behaviour of leaving my bag with my wallet and passport on the bus, cue lots of phone calls to the police and my poor dad but luckily the bag was found and is safely waiting for me in Brisbane. Byron Bay is amazing, its a sufring resort with some hippies and lots of backpackers. We are staying at the Arts Factory which is very quirky-some people sleep in teepee rooms but we are in a normal room with one nice Canadian guy whose friends are camping so isn't around much. yesterday we mooched around the town then Matt and I stuck our feet in the Ocean-it was cold! its warm to walk around in-im in linen trousers and the others are in shorts, but we def need wetsuits for surfing!

Will update on our Byron adventures soon.

Love and kisses!xxx