Sydney - Stage 1

Hi all,

We arrived in Sydney late on Wednesday night only to find out our hotel in Kings Cross (red light, traveller district) had double-booked us! After a few red-headed tantrums it was established there was nothing they could do apart from find us another hotel - sound reasonable.....until we found out the only hotel not booked in Sydney was a motel in Ashfield outside of Sydney - needless to say we weren't the happiest pair of travellers - character building I suppose.

If that wasn't enough - the weather was still awful! Anyway, enough of the moaning.

After getting a taxi back into town, we wandered round the Austrailia Museum... what we realised is that since it is such a young country there wasn't heaps of history - but loads of wildlfe (boring fact - 80% of the animals in Oz are indegenous) - Chris you would have loved it.... once we had freaked ourselves out with all the insects we are going to encounter further North we went round the Aboriginal exhibit - it was fascinating - most of the people have European and Aboriginal names so there was a Paul MaCloud also known as some word I can't pronounce. We felt a bit guilty about the Europeans that tried to 'rescue' the aboriginal children from there happy homes to force them into a European way of life - really quite sad and it only stopped happening in the 60's - if you get a chance to read about it do .....

Enough of the culture - we the headed off to Circular Quay to see Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge taking a stroll through the beautfiul Hyde Park.... the weather was still a bit rough but as we walked into the Harbour the sun came out from behind the clouds - it was spectacular.....so to celebrate we had a few drinks with some stunning back drops..

In the evening we headed to Jimmy Liks (thanks Charlotte) for some fab Asian food and then for a bit of a bar crawl through King Cross - how old did we feel - lots of young students obviously in their gap year ....but we held our own...and went for another drinking session down Oxford Street where James was chatted up in a gay bar

With a bit of a hangover, the next day, we headed to Bondi and walked from Bondi to Tamarama along the coastal path where there was sculptures littered in amongst the cliffs as part of an exhibition. We then had lunch at Bondi Icebergs (thanks again Charlotte) with a beautiful view over Bondi...

That evening we met Plenders (looking well and seems to have taken to the Ozzie way of life); we drank far too much in a sticky-floor pub in the 'Rocks' (near Harbour Bridge). Finished things off with pie and mash at the famous Harry's Van by the water (thanks to Jennise for transport!)

That's all from Sydney at the mo.....

Kirst and James xxx

(Pics at Bondi and Circular Quay)