Kel: Hello, hello! Sorry it's been absolutely ages since we last wrote but we are still alive and kicking. So I've got 7 mins to write as much as poss about Sydney ......!

The lovely Brook and Janet put us up/put up with us for a whole week. They were absolute gems and we had a good few giggles. It's been 6.5 years since I left EY but after spending time together it felt like yesterday. We arrived on Tues morning after an overnight flight straight from Kakadu NP and were totally spaced out. After a morning nap we spent the day on the internet/watching tv/eating take away pizza/doing the washing... basically regular things that we hadn't done for ages. Maybe not the typical tourist stuff, but we really enjoyed it... esp as it was pouring down outside. We chatted about plans for our Sat night out and realised that we had both turned into total tinks with no glad rags. So the next day we were off out to get Matthew sheared and buy shoes for us to get into places in (and they still only cost us 10 dollars each - yes)

So by the next day we were ready to be tourists again. We did a massive walking trip around Sydney which is absolutely stunning city, especially in the sunshine. So botanical gardens, a sydney pie, the opera house, outdoor swimming pools, the observatory, the rocks, the docks and we managed to get KBs from two bars due to our attire - times have changed. We met up with an old school friend of mine Caroline Kirk, which was a bit of an unexpected nice suprise.

We were really lucky to have a great week in Sydney. We followed our busy first tourist day with a trip on a tall ship under the harbour bridge and beyond, a visit to ogle at Brook doing his bit as a volunteer lifeguard at glamarama (tamarama) beach, even though the weather was crap and there weren't many around to save we made him pose all the same, which took a lot of coaxing. We went out for our big Saturday night in Bondi with Brook, Janet and Kristen their friend which was a great laugh and v drunken. Lovely hungover day followed indoors, watching the tudors, eating too much (including a well done barbie). Our last day was spent with a tour around the Sydney Opera house, which M especially liked and then a trip to Manly beach.

Sydney is an absolutely beautiful city with lots of well to do, turned out, young fit people (and by that I mean a runner around every corner - if you don't spend at least 3 hours a day getting your heart pumping out of control you're not going to make it in Sydney = constant feeling of guilt for me) Can totally understand why people want to live here and don't quite understand why Sydney ozzies want to leave it?! So thank you Brook and Janet for a brilliant week. Next stop NZ where we'll try to tell the difference in accents (apparently it's going to be something like fush and chups not feeesh and cheeeps ozzie style)