Well, it's all over now for another year, but this Christmas will definitely be one to remember, as it has been our first in 30 degree heat!!!

After the adrenalin of the bridge climb had worn off we spent the next couple of days getting everything set up for Christmas, and yeas, it did include some last minute shopping!! Christmas eve was spend preparing enough food to ensure that all of New South Wales would be well provided for, before a few drinks with Toyah and Stuart. It was pretty odd to be out in the pubs on Christmas eve and only see a couple other people out. Clearly not a big thing to do over here - maybe everyone else was tucked up in bed waiting for Santa?

We awoke on Christmas day to a white blanket of snow on the ground. No, wait. That would have been you guys! Instead we had the air conditioning turned up so high that a few penguins paid us a visit to get out of the sweltering heat outside. We had planned on taking a walk along through the parks and enjoying the bizarre feeling of a summer Christmas, where jumpers and log fires were replaced by boardies and sunglasses. However, after the feast that we had made had been devoured, we struggled simply to walk up the stairs, yet alone to the end of the road.

The afternoon and evening was spent lounging on the sofa until our food had been digested, and as soon as we felt well enough to move, we got as far as the kitchen and all stuffed ourselves silly again!! This went on for the rest of the day, so even though we were experiencing a whole new Christmas, some things did manage to be kept the same!!

After a sleep deep enough to make the dead jealous, we arose this morning and decided to take a walk around the harbour and try and burn off some of the millions of calories that we consumed yesterday. There must have been something in the water, because we even managed to do something spontaneously without days of planning and before we even knew it was happening, we were taking a tour around the inside of the Sydney Opera House.

It really is a fantastic piece of engineering (or so we were told - we just thought it looked cool) with the structural supports of the 'sails' using only the force of each other to keep them upright. We also saw close up that the outside of the building is covered in millions and millions of tiles, rather than just being painted as we had at first assumed.

The main concert hall is amazing, if a little smaller then we had imagined. Everything is made from exposed wood to create some really good acoustics, and it is home to one of the biggest organs in the world - and yet bizarrely it is almost impossible to see. Even the lights hanging from the ceiling are designed to emphasise the sounds and can be lowered or lifted to create different effects for the audience.

From here we moved into the opera theatre, which is across the way in another building entirely. Unfortunately, this room wasn't quite so appealing to the eye, as everything from the walls to the chairs and even the balconies had been painted black, so that the mina focus was always the stage area. It was also poorly designed as 3/4 of the orchestra were enclosed underneath the stage so as well as some of the music being drowned out, it also meant that many of the musicians became deaf over the course of a shows run. In order to combat this effect, the original architect who designed the building had been asked to come back and redesign the whole room - the first room to be built to his specification as he quit once the shell was in place, before any of the internal building works began.

Once the tour was over, we all headed back to the apartment for some dinner, and being boxing day, this of course consisted of cold turkey and ham sandwiches and anything else that was left over from yesterday!!

After all the learning today, we are continuing tomorrow with a cultural day at the Australia Museum.