Sydney: After my first week in Australia, I took an overnight bus over to Sydney where I stayed for a week. I spent the first few days wandering the city and seeing sights such as the Opera House, Royal Botanical gardens, the Harbour Bridge, Darling Harbour, Haymarket, and Bondi Beach. Unfortunately, it was still winter so I couldn't go swimming/surfing at Bondi beach so we just ran into the water knee deep. Weather wasn't fantastic while in Syndney & it was raining a fair bit so we kinda vegged around the hostel wasting some of the time. Fortunately it's getting progressively warmer as I get further North in Australia and will soon be able to go swimming/surfing.

The night scene in Sydney was pretty good. I had the opportunity of seeing an old high-school friend, Brian, perform at one of Sydneys local bars - it was a great show!! I also made it out to a few other of his friends' live music performances which were also quite good.

Blue Mountains: 4 of us that had met at the hostel decided to rent a car and do a day trip out to the Blue Mountains. Here we had a great drive down the scenic road & saw another of Australia's nice parks. We got lucky with the weather & had a great day exploring.