We weren't up too early today, it's the alcohol's fault.
I had the best breakfast I've had in a while - a bowl of Kellogg's Crunchy Nut!! It was a very exciting moment. You may laugh, but we haven't really seen cereal for a while, never mind normal milk!
Oh, and those baskets of food that we took a few bits out of yesterday, well they were completely empty this morning so all the other backpackers had took every last scrap.
We were still trying to work out what we were going to do for Christmas Day. There's all kinds of things to do and one of the options is Sunburnt - a massive festival on Bondi Beach. But it costs $70 (£45) and most people we've spoken to aren't bothering with it.
In the end we decided we'd have a picnic in a park! So, off we went to buy our bits.
Most important thing first? A trip to the liquor store for our wine...5 litre box for $15 (£10) which is definitely cheap - that's a relief! Then onto Coles Supermarket - turkey slices, cranberry sauce, t-cakes, cous-cous, salad bits, and crisps. We also had to get a treat for Christmas. After all, Christmas is also about eating lots of chocolates and we don't have those big tins of Celebrations or Roses etc. So we got ourselves a big Christmas bar of fruit and nut toblerone. Cost us about £5!! Sweets are expensive too. A kit-kat costs £1.60. A Freddo costs...43p!!! Therese says I'm moaning too much about prices on these blogs...I just want people to know how damn expensive everything is.
Damn, forgot the stuffing. Well, Coles didn't have any left. So then we had to lug all the bags to Woolworths supermarket. And they didn't even know what stuffing is!?!? It was heaving there too so it took ages. We picked up 6 homebrand mince pies for $1.50 (£1). Cheapest thing you can buy in Australia. We now have our mince pie fix. Can't have a Christmas without a mince pie!
Therese was adamant that we needed stuffing, so first we had to drop all the shopping off. Then we had to go stand outside McDonalds to get onto the free WiFi internet again - but we found one! A different Coles store...and they had stuffing!! Then we decided we needed bacon sandwiches in the morning and bucks fizz. The bacon cost 50p a slice and the cava was only £4. We had to settle for using dilute juice we'd already bought instead of fresh orange though. Somethings got to give.
We're in business. We have plenty of Christmas ingredients now.
We got back and put all our food away in the kitchen - hopefully nothing will get nicked! Made ourselves a nice big tuna salad. It's nice to eat something like that for a change.
We found out earlier that the plug sockets in our room don't work. We went down to complain and was given this complete rubbish about the sockets not working for security reasons on our floor...what a load of bull. Never heard anything like it. I said I knew that other sockets work because I'd used them and we're not putting up with that for 2 weeks. Anyway, she managed to sort another room for us but we had to move rooms there and then otherwise we'd have to do it by 10am tomorrow! Not what we wanted to start doing at 6.30pm on Christmas eve.
Therese had been talking to someone and found out about a big firework show for tonight (Christmas Eve!) on Cockle Bay/Darling Harbour, so we went out to see that. It was packed too. We wanted to get a drink somewhere, but around the bay it's all restaurants that were packed out and expensive so we didn't bother.
The fireworks started just after 9pm and were absolutely fantastic. They really put a good show on and it lasted about 10 minutes which is pretty good to say it's all free. There were some really fancy fireworks too. It was almost as good as the one at Disney in Florida, but not quite. But if that's the quality of the fireworks for Christmas Eve, then we're expecting New Years's Eve to be absolutely brilliant. Glad we found out about that anyway!
After the fireworks we caught a few street shows, like fire jugglers and people playing the didgeridoo (however that is spelt). It's pretty good how much is going off down on the harbour and it's a lovely area. There's so many nice looking restaurants, but we can't be affording them on the backpackers budget.
We headed on to Scary Canary for a couple of pints. It was mad as usual. And they had a couple of party games going off that are a bit too saucy to repeat on here. Very funny to watch though. We got chatting to a few people from the hostel and had a couple of jugs of beer, but decided to move on...to midnight mass.
Yeah, that's right, midnight mass. We walked about 10 minutes over to St Mary's Cathedral. We couldn't believe how many people were there when we arrived! There were hundreds of people, I bet over a thousand easily actually. We managed to squeeze down the aisles and got down one side closer to the alter, but couldn't actually see it. All the seats were taken and there were loads of people stood in any free space they could find. The cathedral is huge too.
Although we couldn't see the alter area, we had a TV screen next to us so could see what was going on. It was a long service and a lot was in Latin, which was actually quite nice. They sang a lot of songs in Latin too. It felt properly Christmassy for the first time though really, and then the choir sang one of the songs from Home Alone: Lost in New York. And that's one of the best Christmas films there is!
I couldn't believe it when they started giving out holy communion to everyone who wanted it though...took a while! There were hundreds of people going up for it and Therese went up too. I've not done my first holy communion, so couldn't.
The whole mass took nearly two hours! Our legs were killing. It was a nice thing to do on Christmas Eve though and we're glad we did it. I don't like hangovers on Christmas Day.
When we went outside, they had this really clever projection video onto the church. There were lots of different scenes playing lasting about a minute each. One of the them was loads of candles lit up blowing in the wind. But really detailed and clear. Clever stuff. (see the pictures on Facebook)
It was after 2am by the time we got in! We rang family to wish a happy Christmas for us and happy Christmas eve for them! It was only around 2pm back home. Another late one by the time we got to bed. Unfortunately no Christmas tree to run down to in the morning, but we do have a present each from Michelle, Gareth and Liam, and a card from Therese's grandma waiting for us tomorrow...