We took another overnight bus to Sydney, and awoke at about 7.30 in the morning crossing the Sydney harbour bridge looking at the amazing Opera House.. Certainly cheered me up after a lack of sleep. Sydney is basically London but with the longest bloody traffic light system.. seriously if you need to be somewhere, add on another half an hour just to cross the roads.

We met two Ozzy girls, Sarah and Jenny, in Alice Springs, and they had kindly offered to put us up on the first night. So we caught the train (which is basically a subway) to one of the inner west suburbs of the city, Newtown, and Sarah picked us up from there. After breakfast and a snooze, I managed to get a couple of reasonably priced outfits for Christmas and new year from Newtown; because numpty here brought nothing to go out in! We managed to find some $2 christmas hats and James got a santa suit for $2 from the brilliant K-Mart. Sarah also took us on the train to walk around the Sydney harbour, marvelling the iconic Opera House, had lunch in the city centre, and briefly walked through the Botanical Gardens. We indulged in cheese, biscuits and wine that evening, ooo we felt like royalty. We then retired that evening to Jenny's very comfortable bed.. happy days! The next day we were awoken with a cup of tea and a delicious breakfast.. travelling makes you appreciate the simple pleasures in life.

We checked into a great hostel the following day, Wake Up, situated on the train stations door step. We met a couple staying in our dorm, Mike and Sam, and took a half an hour ferry to Manly with them. Apparently this is supposed to be very beautiful, well to be honest it was just another town of shops, cafes and bars with a very overcrowded beach.. we didn't really understand what made it special.

On Christmas Eve we walked around Darling Harbour and had a nosey in a very big Market to attempt to find a Christmas outfit for myself.. no such luck.. no room for bartering at these markets.. €40 for an outfit, I don't think so! So we headed back to the hostel to prepare for fireworks at Darling Harbour. James and 2other lads in the dorm dressed in Santa suits for the evening. And we met a fourth Santa, Newton, who we met in Asia. So a big group of us headed down to the harbour, armed with the infamous goon (cheap bagged wine) and plastic cups.. We made it just in the nick of time to see the firework display over the harbour bridge. After the display everyone, especially Chinese people, were impressed with the four lads dressed as santa's and insisted on having their picture took with them. It was hilarious, they had a queue of people waiting for a picture with them. Parents were asking them to hold their kids, whilst they had goon in the other.. Sam and I threw down a Santa hat hoping to make some money but a Chinese girl pick it up and threw it back at us! We then partied the night away in a bar overlooking the harbour with a fantastic live band. Thank god there were no children around, their Christmas would have been ruined, seeing 4 drunken santas!

Christmas day we took a bus to Coogie beach with Mike and Sam. Coogie beach was packed with tourists in Santa hats and suits having bbqs. The waves were fantastic here.. all you could here was lots of screams and shouts every 20 wave or so, and you saw a lot of delirious people trying to drag themselves up after getting taken by the wave. We joined in the fun on a body board with Santa hats on. At about 5pm we made our way over to Revesby on the train to meet Jenny. We then had an Ozzy Christmas dinner at her grandma's house.. cold meats and salads. A lot different from home but nevertheless tasty. Ozzies have lots of meals throughout the day unlike us. Just before we left Grandma's, we were gathered around the Christmas tree by Jenny's mum, for the present giving. We even got small gifts from Jenny's Grandma, mum, and Jenny and Sarah! It was really sweet of them and certainly made our day! On boxing day we had another first class breakfast, courtesy of Jenny and Sarah, we then went to the cinema to watch Little Fockers. We spent the following night at Jenny's and Sarah's. We did attempt to get our money back for the night we paid at the hostel by claiming that I had to go to hospital.. no such luck though!

On our last day in Sydney we took a 2hour train journey to Katoomba with Mike and Sam to see the Blue Mountains. Oh dear what a disaster that turned out to be! We didn't set off until about 1pm and it was the foggiest day ever so we could hardly see the scenery and had no clue about the 3 mountains they call The Three Sisters! Anyhow we walked around to look at various lookout points. We saw a hell of a lot of cloud that day! It was an amusing afternoon! We got there at about 3pm and had to leave on the 4.30pm train to make sure James and I were back in Sydney Central for our bus to Melbourne at 8pm. Well that didn't happen, the $2 shuttle back to the train station didn't turn up for half an hour, and the woman at the information kiosk told us the shuttles come every 15 minutes. So we missed the half 4 train and the next one wasn't until half 5. So when we did get back, it was 7.40pm. We ran as fast as we could across town to pack our bags. In the meantime we asked Mike and Sam to try and stall the bus. We got to the bus at 8.05pm. Thankfully he was a kind bus driver. Well running across town carrying an 18kg backpack plus two other bags each caused some pain, especially now that were two little munchkins!