Australia Day

We ripped up some T-shirts. Tattooed our faces. Tattooed our arms. Pulled our hair back. We looked ridiculous. We couldn't look more Australian if we had seriously tried. We were so proud of our outfits. That was until we walked out onto the streets. To say we stood out is a slight understatement.

On the ferry into Sydney we were surrounded by the thickest mist we have ever been in. You could not see a thing. Our ferry blew it's horn every minute and it seemed as though sailing boats were flying at us from all directions as they suddenly appeared out of the nothingness surrounding us. Thankfully we made it out at the other side ready for what Australia Day in Sydney had to offer.

We walked up to Sydney Opera House (it took us this long to realise that Circular Quay, where we came into, is right next to the Opera House. All those people who said it was tiny were not wrong! ) We walked up the steps to take some dodgy photos and then around the harbour to the Botanical Gardens. They are huge and stunning. We were having a great time chasing the birds and pretending to be koalas (Lissie!) until the cannons started going off, swiftly followed by a flock of bats. Here we learnt they are the biggest bats in the world weighing up to 1kg and with wing spans of up to 4ft! They were everywhere! Maz did her best impression of David Attenborough/Steve Irwin as she tried to get up close and personal with them whilst Lissie and Amy had their eyes glued to the ground as they made a hasty exit. They didn't welcome Maz pointing them all out to them as they found the closest exit back into civilisation.

Once in town we walked down to The Rocks, where we watched one of Australian Idol's winners (allegedly) and we walked past the karaoke stage (dragging Liz past it before she could notice it!) before we found our new favourite band ME, by Sydney Harbour Bridge. They were a mix between Muse, The Killers and the Hoosiers; definitely worth checking out. Not much stage presence, but then again they were always going to be outdone by a poor old lady dancing like a 10 year old on M&Ms and Coke directly in front of them. Had the stage been any lower, she would have been on it..

We found the only 24hour bar in Sydney 'Jacksons' (thank you Paul Toner) were we had cider and where Maz sampled the 'Australia Day Cocktail' basically red bull. For those who know Maz, enough said!

Down the road we found a bus from 1937 which took us to Hyde Park in return for a simple donation. Hyde Park is not really like the one in London but still very nice. Here we got ID'd just to go to the toilet in a tent and then poor Lissie got pooed on; an obscene amount of bird poo which Amy lovingly removed with a piece of plastic as she gagged in a very ladylike way.

We walked back up George Street and found the Royal George before heading back to Sydney Harbour to see the 'fireworks'. We waited. We waited. We waited some more. By 10pm we decided to call it a day and get back on the ferry only then to realise that the fireworks actually went off from Darling Harbour at 9pm. Awesome.