25 March 2009

We got our flight today back to Sydney and arrived in at about 4pm. This time instead of being in a dorm in the Base hostel we had our own twin room as we'd booked this back in August when we first planned the trip. It was really nice to be able to unpack our things and not be in a dorm, however we were a little disaspointed to find they'd still given us a bunk bed. After dinner we had an early night ready for our trip to Bondi Beach in the morning.

26 March 2009

Although the weather wasn't brilliant today we decided to get the bus from Sydney to Bondi Beach, which took about an hour. When we got off the bus we weren't sure if we were at the right place as the beach was a lot smaller than we had imagined. However we found the Bondi Beach sign so we knew we were. During our time in Australia we have occasionally watched 'Bondi Rescue' on the tv, so it was very exciting to see the lifeguard station that is featured in it! We also looked out for some of the lifeguards we saw on the show but couldn't see them. As it was a quiet day there wasn't much rescueing going on.

We had been told that it is difficult to get a space on the beach it is so busy, but it was really quiet today - perhaps due to it being a weekday and also not high summer season. It wasn't particularly sunny but was still very warm so we sunbathed here until the afternoon.

Back in Sydney this evening we met up with Emma, a girl we'd met on the Oz bus, for some drinks in the bar next to our hostel.

27 March 2009

Today was our day of sightseeing around Sydney and was perhaps one of our most snap happy days of the trip. We walked from our hostel down to Darling Harbour and then on to the Opera House with about 200 photos of us with the bridge and opera house in the background! Unfortunately it was a bit of a cloudy day but still very warm. We had a look round the botanical gardens and bumped into 2 sets of friends we'd met down the east coast there which was good.

This evening we met up with Natalie and Catherine from our Fraser island trip for dinner and drinks in Sydney. We probably won't see them again on the trip as they are staying in Australia for a bit longer than us so we had a nice last evening together. As it was friday night it was really busy in Sydney with lots of nice dressed up people - made us wish we had some nice going out clothes and straighteners!

28 March 2009

Today we made our way to centennial park for the V festival. We had a bit of a stressful morning worrying about our bus pass for new zealand but we managed to sort it out eventually and calm down a bit before the festival. Compared to an english festival it was very easy to get to and relatively quiet. The most striking difference from english festivals was the weather, it was a beautiful day probably the best we had in australia. We had been speaking to people who had bought tickets the day before which would be unheard of back home. The first act we saw was Duffy who was brilliant live, we enjoyed her set much more the we had expected to. Then we went on to meet some friends from our Whitsundays trip and listen to Elbow perform who were really good also. Later in the evening we decided to pick kaiser chiefs and razorlight to watch and then finally killers. At this point the crowd got really big and we had to fight to keep our spot. A few people were dissapointed as they played a lot of their new songs but they finished with all the crowd pleasers and everyone seemed to go home happy. We made our way back to the hostel on free buses that were provided and had some coco pops before bed.

29 March 2009

Today we packed up and checked out for our flight to new zealand. In the morning we met our friends from the Oz bus for lunch and got in a bit of last minute shopping before heading to the airport. The flight was only 3 hours long and we arrived at about 10pm New zealand time in Christchurch. Once we arrived at the airport we picked up a shuttle to our hostel in Christchurch. We had a lovely double room that we had pre-booked and were very happy to discover it even had a tv. We spent the night watching a very weird film but were so excited to be watching tv that we didnt really mind.