Our plane landed in Sydney at around 08:30 on Monday 11 June. None of our CouchSurfing requests had come through, so we took our time finding a place to stay. It was miserable and raining so we got a taxi straight to our hostel, where we hid from the rain for most of the day. The hostel was called Maze and it sure lived up to its name. It was the biggest we've ever been in - hundreds of rooms all connected by identical looking corridors - so easy to get lost. Later we braved the elements to get some things from the Coles accross the road. We made yummy chicken wraps for dinner before going back to chill in our room until bedtime.

On Tuesday the weather was a bit better, so we decided to pack some lunch and do a free 3 hour walking tour of the city. We met near the old cathedral and then followed the guy as he led us on a route up towards the harbour. We saw a whole bunch of interesting sights that we would have totally overlooked if someone wasn't there to point them out to us. It was also great to hear some history and some of the stories of how Australia, and Melbourne in particular, came to be. We finished the tour at the harbour, overlooking the opera house and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. We had a late lunch in a nearby square, and then stopped in at the nearby public library for some internet/admin time (free wifi spots are few and far between in Australia?? Complete opposite to USA.) By the time we were done it had started to rain again :-/ Fortunately we had our rain jackets so didn't get too wet on our walk back. That night we popped next door to a local pub called Maloneys for a delicious buffet dinner.

Wednesday it was raining on and off the whole day, but we went out exploring anyway. First we walked down to the Paddys Market, which is a huge local market selling just about everything you can think of. Afterwards we walked through a really cool park up towards Darling Harbour. There wasn't too much to see there in the rain, so we continued back towards the city where we had walked the day before. The tour that we had done was great for pointing things out but there wasn't a lot of time to actually have a look around, so we decided to basically walk the tour again on our own, taking a bit more time. It was late evening before we headed back, stopping to get some socks & postcards at this chinese store that had this really annoying monotone Aussie voice broadcasting adverts and specials non-stop. We chilled out a bit in our room and then, after dinner, went nextdoor to Maloneys again to watch the second game of State of Origin (basically its some super big-deal rugby leage thing between New South Wales and Queensland) NSW happed to win it 16-12, tying the 3 match series. We then went back to chill in our room, where Monique discovered the iPad games Jetpack Joyride and Megarun, which she couldn't put down for the rest of the evening ;-) It was "intense!"

Thursday checked out, dumped our bags in storage and walked back into town. The weather was much better so we decided to get a bus through to Bondi. There were still a few clouds around, but the sun was out most of the time and we had a great afternoon just chilling on the beach. When it started to get cold, we packed up and walked around for a while, looking at some of the shops. We got the bus back and had a quick pasta dinner at the hostel. They were also doing a free barbeque, so we grabbed a couple of burger patties on slices of bread. By then we were stuffed, so we got our things together and walked down to the main train station, which was about 10 minutes away. We checked our bags in and, after a bit of a wait, boarded our train for the 11 hour trip down to Melbourne.

Friday morning we arrived early at Southern Cross Station. The station is pretty cool, and we immidiately got a sense of why Melbourne is consided to be the art capital of Australia. The train ride was pretty uncomfortable so neither of us had slept very much :-/ We were only due to meet Monique's sister later in the day, so we took a walk down towards Southbank, where we ate some muffins with cream-cheese on the steps of the convention center overlooking the river. Afterwards we walked along the river, looking at all the trendy little restaurants and coffee shops. We eventually stopped for a coffee at a food court which had internet, so we just chilled there for a while. At around lunch time we gathered up all our things and made the long walk back up to the train station. We picked up our tickets and hopped on the next train out to Bendigo!