Arrived back in Sydney at Central Station after another loooooong overnight coach journey. Met Ciara and Ryan at the station, randomly bumping into Ciara an hour or so before we were supposed to meet as she was trying to find a toilet! We then went to get the train to Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains where Ciara had booked for us to spend 4 nights over Xmas.

After the 2 hour train ride up into the mountains, past ever increasingly beautiful views we finally arrived in Katoomba, and luckily only had a quick trek from the station to the hostel. By that point we were all starving so we dumped our bags, after finding out at the hostel that we'd have free internet access and free washing facilities, as well as being able to drink our own alcohol in the hostel seeing as they didn't have a bar, and headed out for a quick walk around town to find some food. The rest of the day after that was spent pretty much just chilling out, as Ciara and Ryan had also had a long overnight coach journey to Sydney down from Byron Bay. When Ciara and I headed up to bed later that night we finbally got the chance to meet one of our roomates. Firsst impression wasn't exactly the best in the world, we walked into the room to find this guy sitting in a chair staring into his open doored locker. After fiddling around in the room for awhile while he was still sitting there looking into the locker Ciara and I went to the toilet. On the way out of the door I notice that he has a saw in his locker, A SAW! Funnily enough we were slightly worried about this and Ciara had visions of him cutting our heads off in the night! Ryan didn't seem as bothered, he thought we were being melodramatic! When we got back to the room the guy, when he finally introduced himself he was called Chris, decided to explain to us why he had a saw in his locker. He'd obviously seen the panicked look in our eyes as we ran out of the room! Apparently he's a gardener and someone had given him the saw as a Christmas present. Of course they had, thats perfectly normal?!?! To be fair, Chris was alright, just a bit on the peculiar side of things. After the saw incident he sat in the chair staring into the locker while eating bananas out of a massive tub.

We survived the night and headed out on Christmas Eve to explore the Blue Mountains. We bought a ticket for the Trolley Buses which take you round 29 points in the area, we headed straight out to Echo Point where there were fantastic views into the valley and across the 3 sisters. After that we headed round to the skyway to get what is basically a cable car across the valley. The views are stunning as you go across and when you get to the other side you have the choice to go down a railway into the valley and the rainforest or a cable car. We got the railway down, which is the steepest railway in the world at 52 degrees. It was really fun! It feels like a ridiculously long drop on a rollercoaster through the trees and down into the valley, very cool! After that we did a walk through the rainforest before getting the cable car back up to the top. On the way back we'd scoped out somewhere that we'd be able to have our Christmas Day BBQ! We spent the rest of the day jumping off the bus at various points, the chocolate shop and the tea room where we had a cream tea. This place has some ridiculous number of tea pots collected, something like 3,000. And I don't think I'm exaggerating by saying that either!! After we finished the tour we rushed down to Coles to get all of our food before grabbing a quick dinner at the pub next door to the hostel and then having a few drinks before bed.

Christmas Day! We wake up and......it's raining! Woo! Apparently its the first time in 10 years that it's rained over Xmas over here. Bloody typical, we miss a white xmas at home and we end up with rain in Australia! We headed out to have our BBQ and managed to enjoy a couple of hours without rain before it bucketed it down. Luckily the BBQ area was covered so there was a group of people all huddled underneath cooking there food and trying to stay dry! When we got back to the hostel later that afternoon we just hung out and played a few games, had a bit of a nap, where we met yet another crazy person who was in our room. Ciara and I had gone upstairs, she was dozing and I was reading and this old man comes into the room, stands in the middle of the room and just looks around for ages before he starts shouting about people stealing his bed and him having nowhere to stay and some kind of travel pass he'd lost. After he'd gone we went down to reception to complain about him and ask if we could move rooms if he was going to be staying there. Apparently he leaves stuff there but doesn't sleep there because he doesn't like sharing a room with other people. The girl at reception assured us he wouldn't come back and that they would deactivate his room key so he couldn't get in. Because of that we left it and spent the rest of the night in the computer room attempting to make Skype calls home!

Boxing day we woke up and yet again, more rain. We were glad that we'd done our tour of the views on Xmas eve as when we'd driven past Echo Point on the bus the day before it was so foggy you couldn't see a thing. All these people had come on day trips up from Sydney and could see sod all! As part of our ticket we'd arranged to see some caves in the Blue Mountains so we headed out in the rain to catch our bus. We visted Jelongan Caves and managed to keep dry for most of the day while we walked through the cave. Unfortunately our ticket only meant we got to tour one cave so we had to sit around for a couple of hours waiting for the coach to take us back to Katoomba. On the other hand it was probably a good job we hadn't paid extra to see other caves, there is only so many stalagtites and stalagmites you can see and take pictues of before you get bored!! When we got back that night we went with a group of others from the hostel to see Sherlock Holmes. Bloody brilliant film! Unfortunately after we'd gone to bed that night the crazy man came back and slept in our room. To say we were less than impressed was an understatement. I know he wouldn't have done anything but his whole demeanour meant that Ciara and I didn't feel particularly safe and we were royally pissed off that we'd given reception the chance to move us and they'd promised us he wouldn't be back. When I complained the next morning I found out that there wasn't any way they would have been able to block his key card, they aren't given out under names. They told us that they had permission from the owner to chuck him out next time he came back but unfortunately for us thats a bit little too late! So if anyone visits Katoomba in the future just remember thats where all the Australian crazies seem to congregate!!

I'd managed to book a last minute hostel in Sydney for over New Year on Boxing Day so luckily I had somewhere to stay when we arrived back in Sydney on the 27th. I arranged to meet Ciara and Ryan the next morning to hopefully go to the beach for the day and left them to get the train to there hotel out of town while I tried to find my hostel! That night I went to see Alicia and Mike for dinner, guys I'd met when I'd been in Sydney for the week before Melbourne, and I had a lovely Irish Stew cooked courtesy of Mike! I'd made plans with a few of the guys I'd met in Sydney, and then some of the guys I'd met in Melbourne who had come up for NY to meet the next night to go out for food and drinks for my birthday. Unfortunately when I woke up on my birhtday it was pouring it down! Made it feel more like England, but there really isn't that much to do in Sydney when it's raining. We spent the day having a mooch around the city and debating whether to go and see Avatar just to get out of the rain. Apparently everyone had the same idea as the cinema was packed! Luckily by the evening it had cleared up and we met everyone to go for food and drinks. It was a good night and it was good to have a group of friends around to celebrate with. The next few days in Sydney were spent rushing to the beach as soon as the sun came out, which unfortunately was only twice, being an unofficial tour guide to Ciara and Ryan and planning what we were going to do for NYE. Tina had managed to find one of the only spots in Sydney where it was BYO alcohol so on NYE we all met up and found a spot on Observatory Hill where we could see the bridge. It was a good day and there was a great atmosphere on the hill. You can see from the pictures that we got a bit bored at some points during the day and I took a load of random pictures. Understandable really, we were sitting there for over 10 hours!! Some people got absolutely trashed really early on in the day, I doubt if they even made it to the 9 o'clock fireworks let alone the midnight ones! After sitting there all day I'm glad to say that I wasn't disappointed with the first fireworks display, it was awesome! After seeing the 9 o'clock show we rushed down to leave stuff at Tina's hostel and then headed into the street down at The Rocks to find a spot so we could see the front of the bridge for the midnight firework display. You can't really tell from the pictures because of all the smoke but they were awesome! I've been warned that I'm never going to have another NYE like this one, which to be honest isn't going to be hard as I never do anything at home for it anyway!!

After NYE I was in Sydney for another couple of days hanging around so decided to get myself sorted and get out of the city. I can't understand why so many people wax lyrical about how amazing Sydney is. I really don't get it. Yeah, its a great city, but it isn't that amazing! After the week I spent in Sydney at the start of December I'd done everything I wanted to do and I'd had a much better time when I was down in Melbourne. It probably would have been better had it been sunnier because I could have spent more time at the beaches but it was definately better because of the friends I had in the city. If I hadn't had people to be bored with I would have gone mad! I managed to book a spot on a Greyhound and find a hostel for Sunday night in Byron Bay. At the moment there is a mass exodus of backpackers leaving Sydney as pretty much every Tom, d*** and Harry had been there for NY so I was quite lucky to have got a ticket at the last minute! I've been in Byron for a couple of days so far so I'll leave this blog entry for now, I'm all booked up for my Fraser Island and Whitsunday trips over the next couple of weeks so I'll write more when I've got some hopefully more interesting stuff to tell you!!