Sydney is big but it is nowhere near as nice as Melbourne. Its just another city, with far more traffic and far more people but lacking in atmosphere. Everything is rush rush rush, wheras Melbourne has a much more laid back and homly attitude. Its not to say that I don't like Sydeny. The Harbour is beautiful. It lives up to everyhting I thought it would be. As has Australaia so far.

After arriving Sydeny, I had a nice quiet night in. The hostel had managed to make a mess of our booking and we ended up being put in a twin room for two nights, which was rather nice. I slept like a baby then got up the next morning and took part in a free walking tour of the city. The tour took us to Paddy's market, a market full of fresh fruit and veg and the cheapest clothes you could imagine but I was very good, and resisted - mainly because I have absolultly no room left in my bag even with the extra rucksack i bought for my front. We walked around Chinatown, down to Darling Harbour which was home to the Aquarium and National Maritime Museum which meant the harbour was full of old warships, submarines and was the current port for the Young Endevour which i also saw (and boarded) on a trip with Rob, Helen and the boys in Melbourne. We walked over to Cirqular key and I got my first face to face glimpse of the Opera House in all its glory. A lot of people say that it looks a lot smaller than they expected but in my opinion it looks just right. The botanical gardens housed the biggest and most colourful garden spiders i have ever seen. Some were easily the size of my hand (legs included)! Then everywhere in all of the trees were flying foxes; they are a relation to the bat and are enourmous things just hanging upsidedown from branches. There were hundereds of them! On the walking tour I met another Welshman and this time he was from Aberaeron. Rachel and I had met up with James again who was staying in the same hostel so that night we headed to the bar for a few quiet drinks and Andrew (the other Welshman from Aber) joined us from Bondi. It was becoming a family reunion already and Chris and Chris (not a typing error, there are actually two) from Melbourne joined us on Saturday!

My time in Sydney was spent mainly wondering the Harbour, I visited Sydney Aquarium (again, in my opinion it wasn't as good as Melbourne's; although it did hold a rather large crocodile). For me the best part of the city was the time I spent touring the inside of the Opera House and climibing one of the pilons of the Harbour Bridge. The Opera house is a achitectural feat of genius. It is not white like it appears in pictures, it is actually a dull creamy colour and made up of thousands and thousands of tiles. The Opera House was designed and built to represent its surroundings (the Harbour) and that is why to many, including myslef it takes on the appearance of sails or seashells.

Inside is impressive aswell. There are two main halls, one for concerts and large operas and the other for ballet and smaller operas. There are also a number of smaller halls in the basement where theatracle performances are based. The amount of thought that went in to its furnishings, nevermind its outershell is amazing, e.g. the chairs are all constructed so that they absorb sound in the same way as a human being so that no matter if the hall is full or partially empty they sound will always sound the same.

The Harbour Bridge is also an amazing construction. It is the largest single span bridge in the world (although there is one that is marginaly longer in America, this one is wider and is constructed of more steel). There is the option to climb over the bridge, but at $200 I am afraid I gave that one a miss and chose to climb one of the pilons for $190 less. The view was practicaly the same and I was only 40ft of its total hight. It was such a bizarre sensation being in the place that I had seen only in pictures all my life. I loved it!

Today I met up with a group of lads that were staying in the hostel and we all headed down to the botanical gardens to watch the 'Redbull Flugtag'. It is basically a mcuh larger version of teh birdman of Aberdyfi where lots of people run of the end of a pier wearing rediculous costumes that are noway going to make them fly. It was good to watch though. I like meeting new peoiple and making new friends. One, Adam, is heading off to Brisbane this week, so that gives me soemone to see when I get there!

Our stay in Sydney is only 6 nights, tonight is our last. I have had a great time, other than the Harbour the other highlight for me was our day tour to the Blue Mountains. You shall have to read my Blue Mountains Blog for that. I would recommend going, if you come to Australia, you can't really not but you don't need all that long to explore it. We are off to sunny Bondi tommorrow - surf sea and sand!