Guyyyyyys,

A massive hello from the two of us down in Australia. We are sorry it has taken this long to get the next post to you guys, but we can assure you we are both safe and alive (and not sunburnt....).

So we have been in Australia for almost two weeks now, and this post will be followed up tomorrow with another to let you all know how we have got on during our time up in the Gold Coast, where we currently sit in a lovely air conditioned hotel given it is BOILING outside...

So, our first 8 days took us down to Sydney and the start of our month in Oz. Needless to say for anyone who has visited this place, it is bloody cool (well actually, it was really hot - but we mean the hip and fun kind of cool). Whilst we thought San Fransisco was small and we could around it, only to realise it was absolutely enormous.. Sydney turns out to be fairly small and perfectly walkable.

We sat on the 4th or 5th day (over cold sweet beers) and discussed what we made of it, and both agreed that it is bascailly a love child between New York and Auckland... Beautifully clean and chilled city sitting right on the water, with Harbours and bays galore, yet imposing and very impressive Sky scrapers and architecture capture the eye from almost any point in the city. It seems to be one of those places whereby you cant really tell if its a weekday or the weekend (although perhaps thats because we have no purpose but to wonder around taking pictures :P ). But it seems to always be bustling, like every great city. Like all good cities, there is also an abundance of amazing food, drink and street artisits - one called Joe Moore we both particularly enjoyed!

So, just to give a flavour of our time there and some of the highlights, weve taken the best of the 8 days and put them below for you all to enjoy :):

- Sydney Opera House and Bridge: As expected, great pictures from our professional repitoire of abilities... but seriously these things are both beyond awesome. Best bit is, one of the best burgers ever down under the Opera house and for only 15 bucks!

- Royal Botanic Gardens: Basically a massive park, but we had a total blast walking around and taking pictures of all of the odd trees we could see. Its worth noting at this point that both Bruce and I were on the look out for flying spiders or bats.... both of which are real and could kill us..

- Hyde Park: So basically this place turns out to be a total nature reserve: Bats, Cockatoos, Possoms, Some funny big Oz bird that seems to walk around like it owns the place, Lorikeets and im sure plenty more. Funny moment was when we discovered the bats and Bruce basically ran the a record 100m to escape... i stood around and laughed. We also nailed frisbee skills for many a moment in this park during our time here.

- Darling Harbour: So this place is pretty much the nicest part of Sydney for us, the harbour has some really cool bars and the views of the skyline are just unreal. Best thing we managed to do was find a restaurant that gave a free bottle of wine with dinner... yes, we did get drunk there!

- Westfield: Ok so just on this one, we did spend one afternoon after moving hotels walking the length and bredth of Sydney trying to find a cheap and within budget place to eat. Turns out we lost all sense of direction and walked into this place no less than 3 times when we were dead certain we'd gone a difference direction. The phrase 'I need a beer' came out a few times that afternoon!

- Bondi Beach: What a beach. Whitest sand, clearest seas and lots of Sun. Great for our waterball exercises (this counts as cardio!) and yeah we spent most of the day dossing around. Fish and Chips was awesome, the after effect on us both... was not so good. And even though we caked ourselves in suncream, we both glowed like a christmas tree that evening for the first time. The coastal walk is also stunning and definitely worth the time.

- Manly: ok, so were sure this place is awesome. Very art / deco like, and some awesome shops etc. But basically, there is NOTHING TO DO HERE... beach was ok, and we did have an amazing lunch. But its fair to say the best part of this was the ferry ride to and from Manly (leaving manly especially!). Oh,. and really nice 'tour guide' that was on the ferry, which no one listened to (mainly because you couldnt hear him over the wind and engines).

- Australia Museum: Awesome place to go and check out the history of this country, especially learning about the past and checking out the really cool tools and ways the old Aborigines used to live way back in the day. I spent a good 30 mins reading about the exctinction of the Dinasours whilst Bruce checked out all of the bugs (''bugs''... These things are monsters ok!) that are in this country. We realised we had left it late however and only managed to get around maybe two thirds before it shut.

We also had a few doss days, where we managed to go through the entire travelodge paper supplies printing our documents for Asia, and there were a few days of torrential rain which allowed us the excuse to spend most of our day chilling out and just relaxing.

Ok so what else.... There were no bugs, which leads us to believe that its all lies and propaganda (this quickly changed when we arrived here, but more on that later), Sydney seems to be really spread out... no real concentration of food or drink venues, other than at the harbour. We did eventually manage to find some great pubs to have a few drinks in. We would also say that Sydney would have been much more exicting and enjoyable had we had a larger disposable income, since there so many things to do but they are all quite costly.

After the 8 days we were ready to head on, having had some awesome experiences and seeing some of the worlds most famous things. Great city, great food, great experience.

We hope everyone back home is really well and keeping up to speed with out blog. We promise not to leave it two weeks until the next one. Pictures will get loaded as well so check them out and as always we would love to hear from you guys about how things are.

Big love and see you all soon!

Bruce and Ash x