Saturday 9th Jan

In the morning we had arranged to meet back up with my friend Lauren, who was now on her way from Melbourne to move in with Sara (who we'd met in Hoi An) over in Umina. Lauren met us at the train station just opposite our hostel and the three of us went to a cafe. We caught up with her last 3 weeks of adventures and said goodbye (hopefully temporarily as I'd like to visit them both on our travels up). Lisa and I then spent some time relaxing in the communal area and booking up what caravan site we would stay at on Monday and Tuesday in Blue Mountains then cooked some hot dogs for lunch.

In the afternoon we ventured out to visit the Royal Botanic Gardens. I was absolutely in love with the place and all its greenery. It was a huge garden area with magnificent trees and all kinds of unusual plants, all of which were labelled so you knew what you were looking at. There was a little train that took you around pointing out highlights and providing information. My favourite part was hearing about the wishing tree which people used to believe had spiritual powers if you stepped forward three times and backwards three times and made a wish it would come true. We then picked up a map and wandered around, grabbed a cup of tea at the cafe and did some people watching and gazed over at a group of people having beautiful wedding pictures done. I didn't really want to leave the place, I could have spent a whole day there, but we had to get back as we had plans.

After a nap which lasted a bit too long...we rushed to get ready and leave at 8.30 with a group of people from the hostel for a walk to watch the fireworks at darling harbour. We chatted to two girls from Liverpool, Stacey and Sarah on the walk down, and when we arrived ran off to grab a McDonald's for dinner and stood eating it as we watched the fireworks. I was supposed to have met Will and Saffi outside the front of the iMax but we couldn't find them. Thankfully after the fireworks had finished they were stood just behind us and called us over. We grabbed our club tickets for 'Home bar' off our hostel guide (Gary who we knew well now as he'd done all the events this week), and went with Will and Saffi for a quick glass of wine before heading back to the club for 10pm.

I was sad to have rushed off from the both of them but we were told if we were to go any later it would be a 40 minute que and we had also told the other girls we'd meet them there. Anyway, it wasn't worth rushing off, firstly Lisa and I got asked how many drinks we'd had by the bouncer whilst we were queuing, I was offended by this as we clearly looked tired from the last 2 nights of going out - I'm obviously getting too old for being able to pull off 3 nights in a row now. Then when we got into the place, it was a huge warehouse type club where there were lots of really drunk girls in heels. I would normally have fun somewhere like this at home but I was totally sober and we were tired and on our own and didn't feel greatly safe there. After exploring all the rooms and not seeing the other two girls, we decided against buying a drink and left to go back to the bar at the hostel. By the time we got there I was feeling even more tired and wanted to go straight to bed. I stuck it out and went in with Lisa to use our free drink voucher but was getting really annoyed with being knocked by people and it was unbearably busy. Despite Lisa wanting to stay, we finally left and by half 12 I was in bed tucked up and happy.

xxx