G'day mate! All the way from down under!

So here i am at last, back in the westernized world and ready for an ozzy adventure with soph! we both arrived into Sydney early on the 24th and the plan was for her to be waiting at the gate for me with balloons and flowers and maybe a banner too since her flight got in slightly before mine, however thansk to my amazing que jumping skills i actually managed to make it through customs before her! so in the end it was a bit of a muddled hello amongst a wave of screaming teenage girls who, suprisingly enough, wernt there for me?? apparently some dude called justin bieber or somthing was arriving the same morning...personally i have never heard of him...but then again I am slightly out of the loop musically these days!

So after changing my hundreds of Indonesian rupiah for a meek $13 oz dollars and asking a lovely group of 'airport professionals' (basically a load of fit pilots) what the correct international dialing code for oz was (any excuse right?!) we set about catching the shuttle bus to our hostel…and then ran back to get the tickets that some silly woman forgot to give us - apparently it happens all the time, so why let her work there then?! - and then ran to catch the shuttle again - another good start I feel! The hostel itself was Base Sydney and as far as hostels go it was pretty damn nice! By the time we got there it was still stupidly early so instead of taking advantage of a full day in the city, we decided to pretend we had been there all along and just go to sleep ready to wake up with everyone else! Im pretty sure when everyone woke up a couple of them were slightly curious as to our sudden appearance in the two previously empty beds…our eventual waking laid the way for a truly entertaining day of what I can only describe as giggleicious jetlag :P we actually couldn't stop laughing the entire time we walked round Darling Harbor (and what a darling little place it was :P) especially when we spent about 25 minutes walking up and down the same corridor looking for the bloody amenities! Which even though we followed the signs to the letter, still evaded us until we started literally scanning every wall for a flippin door! I have NEVER in my life gone to so much effort to pee!

The day continued in ridicules hysterics until wefinally shut ourselves up with ice cream and dominos pizza later that evening - something that was a lot harder than expected since Dominos didn't recognize the city 'Sydney' on their little voice menu thing! Oh and did any of you know they don't have sweet corn in OZ when it comes to pizza?!!! WTF right?! Still, eventually we got our pizza and raw garlic bread (because apparently that's what ozzy's like best) and settled into the kitchen to stuff our little tired faces…deliberately ignoring all the other people eating their healthy home cooked meals but secretly coveting our mass of grease :P

Oh and by the way, earlier in the day when we were looking through the hundreds of tourist brochures we acquired throughout the day - Sophie sat in poo. Just wanted to highlight that fact again. Given, it was bird poo and we didn't actually notice till we got back to the hostel, but it was definitely poo. And that was how Australia welcomed her :P

The next day we slept in. A lot. I'm not denying we had plans to see the city and ideas on what we wanted to spend the day doing.But seriously, we slept in. I mean until breakfast was done and even brunch was iffy. In fact we ended up at an amazing little bistro on the harbor, arriving just in time to justify ordering off their all day breakfast menu! Still, the sun was shining, the lindt café was begging me to buy macaroons and the whole of Sydney was our oyster! Except that it wasn't because by the time we got our arses into gear it was too late to most of the s*** we wanted to so we ended up deciding to extend our trip by another day and just go to the zoo. There was a little boat trip required to get there and back but it meant we got to see the bridge and the opera house with the sunset so it was definitely worth it! I actually cant explain how much I love this city. It is possibly the most beautiful cosmopolitan of everyday glorious normality and insanity that I have ever witnessed. Even now I cant understand how it can be so busy and yet so peaceful at the same time - It's a similar feeling to Singapore thinking about it, except here I have the familiarity and comfort of having someone form back home to experience it with me - all the inside jokes from uni or my little quirky stories actually mean something to the company im with - it's a really great feeling after so much time alone or effort making new friends and catching them up on my entire existence up till now! Basically I love Sydney. Incase you didn't get that, and I could easily stay here for a long long time and be very happy about it. But I wont, because its so frikin expensive so back to the story…

The zoo was immense. It was so much fun, like more fun than it should have been because for some reason I turned into a bit of a 6 year old at some point during the afternoon and refused to revery back until we were back on the boat! We spent the whole time catching up on goss from back home, taking silly pictures, and running around like maniacs trying to fit the entire zoo into the space of 2 ½ hours as opposed to the 4 hours they recommend! Just for the record - we did. BOOYAAA!!The only negative aspect of the day was our arrival - we were met at the ferry by a woman from the zoo who told us very briefly to go to the left. So we did. What she did not clarify was that we should then follow some stairs up to the entrance. And even when she saw us walk in the wrong direction which led to a 45 minute walk through b***** all - she didn't feel the need to tell us. Apparently when we confronted her with the other couple that did the same thing, she maintained that she told the other couple the right directions and expected us to just follow these complete strangers instead of receiving our own instructions. Now needless to say those who know me well will know that I don't complain about much…but when I do complain, I do it right. By the time I got up the stairs to the entrance I was so worked up that the woman behind the counter didn't know what hit her!I was just about done when I realized the stupid woman was b****ing about US for being rude to the driver of a bus that was parked next to her by the ferry…not a good move on her part. I hope she fell in the water. Then got fired. Then fell in again. And maybe got eaten by seals. Not so she died, just so that it really hurt. REALLY hurt. I don't like her.

That evening I did something I had always wanted to do - I had a lobster dinner at an amazing seafood restaurant by the harbor. It was only a baby lobster but it was lobster. And it was amazing! Definitely the best stupidly expensive meal I have everhad the displeasure of handing over my debit card for! :P after that we went back to the hostel to meet up with a couple of girls in our room who we decided to go out with that night - you see it just so happened to be ANZAC day which meant there was a lovely butt load of sailors and captains perusing the streets all in uniform for our simple enjoyment :P needless to say we trawled the bars for themwith the absolutely necessary important task of getting a photo in one of their hats. It had to be done. Unfortunately all the sailors appeared to be taken (shock) so just as we were about to give up I spotted one walking along the street below our bar and within 10 seconds all four of us were on our feet, downing our drinks, rushing out the door and shouting for his attention (in a very classy way of course) in the middle of a street. I know I know my proudest moment to date I'm sure :P but it worked! And even though our sailor - Joshua - looked a bit like Mr. Bean, we still got a photo in his hat and that's what mattered!

Our final day in Sydney approached far quicker than we had anticipated but boy was a day its been!we decided in order to do everything we wanted to do and see everything there was to see, we had to work fast. So we booked a day tour to the blue mountains which happened to include a LOT of other stuff too which always helps matters! So, we started by visiting Featherdale wildlife park which housed all the Ozzy animals that we didn't see at the zoo yesterday. Even better was that we got the chance to see them up close and personal - especially the roo's and koalas! We got to literally touch and stroke a koala and have pictures with it, which seeing as they are actually furry little double headed penis owning sex pests with Chlamydia possibly shouldn't have been so high on our agendas! But it was pretty immense anyway! And its ok, we're still both clean :P and speaking of immensity, we got to hand feed kangaroo's as well! For ages, both of us were just feeding them and hugging them and sitting next to them, it was really surreal! They are soooo sweet though, and soft! Really they are just my fave of all the oz animals we saw, even though the wombats were pretty damn cute too (they just look like giant hamsters!) but no, roo's definitely topped the list!

Next on the agenda was a boomerang throwing lesson from our tour guide Bob! It was so much fun! And I am happy to say I did rather suck at it, but soph had it down from the first go so at least one of us managed it! we then made ourt way tro the Bluie Mountains to a lookout point where we could see the 3 sisters mountains(see http://www.crystalinks.com/dreamtime.html for the story) and got to take a ride on the worlds steepest railway - basically it was up a side of the mountain at a 52 degrees angle - tres fun!! after that we had a nice buffet lunch a a country club and then made our way to the a little town which had the most amazing candy shop in it! and a teapot shop which was almost as much fun! I ended up buying various items I really didn't need including Britmite (marmite just doesn't sound as fun!) Boobie enhancers (coz, well, you know) and other items that simply cant be named :P. the best part was that for some reason me and soph felt the need to burst into song every time one of the following words was mentioned - Candy Shop, boardwalk or Kookaburra - you would be surprised how many times today they have been talked about! And even though everyone did look at us in a very strange way, we knew, really, they all wanted to join in…'take me to the candy shop…' - yeah baby. our final stop of the day was Olympic Village, and I have to say, here is where the Ozzys do it best. In no way could England ever rival their Olympic set up and I have no shame in saying that, I mean this place was just immense! And the best part was that it was alls till working and still being used and making profit! It was the cleanest, neatest, most spectacular collection of architecture I have ever witnessed in the middle of a city - Australia - I salute you.

Here the day ended, well the tour did anyway. We got a ferry back and walked along the Circular Quay just after sunset, absolutely beautiful. Dinner was lovely, a nice little place called Ice bar right by the water and then dessert, obviously, was a visit to the Guillian Chocolate Café. It had to be done. And that leads me to now, I'm fed, watered, packed and ready to go tomorrow morning when we officially start the Oz experience up the east coast to Cairns. This is gonna be good.

xxx