G'day Mates!!

So, I finally arrived in Sydney, after a 3 hour delay because the toilets on the plane were not working!! I hot-tailed it to the Central YHA where I met the boul Ms. Maguire. It was sooooooo good to see her and we were practically hoarse that evening from all of our chatting, but I did have a lot of gossip to catch up on!!

That evening we decided to treat ourselves (thanks to Mammy Murray) and we went to the Sky Tower revolving restaurant for our dinner. It was yummy yummy yummy (Kangaroo and Camel and all!) and much needed after nine days of rice in Fiji!! We got up early enough the next day and booked our Harbour Bridge Climb. Then we went down to the Opera House (in the lashing rain I might add) to book seats for a concert that night. Our bridge climb started at 3.45pm and was a twilight climb. We were so lucky that it had stopped raining and it didn't rain the whole time we were up there. We had an amazing sunset too. It was such a cool experience. I did it the last time I was here and even still I would do it again. The guide, Paul, was brilliant too; he was full of interesting trivia such as the story about an Irish guy called Vincent Kelly who was a construction worker who fell off the bridge when it was being built but survived by throwing his hammer in to the water to break the surface tension before he hit the water. He was awarded for his bravery etc but in the end it turned out that it was all a bet and that he jumped off the bridge to prove that he could survive it!! And we wonder why the Aussie's think we're headers?!!!

After the bridge climb we went to the Opera House and had a glass of champagne before the show. We were looking fab in our jeans and runners I must say! We saw Bruckner's Ave Maria and Durufle's Requiem. It was brilliant and Ms. Maguire kept time perfectly with her head nodding along and her eyes closed!!! It was a brilliant day in all!

The following day it was off to Manly (in the rain!) for a day of shopping! Yes we are such girls, but it was fun and it was very successful!!

Then it was off to the Blue Mountains for a fabulous day of hiking/strolling through the magical Katoomba rainforest. We had such an amazing day weather wise. We did a five hour walk down to Echo point where you can see the Three Sisters and we also went down to one of the sisters which consisted of what felt like hundreds of steep steps down and thousands back up! But it was all good to use a James Murray phrase! We headed back to the hostel (YHA voted best hostel in NSW and we could see why) where we cooked a scrumptious meal and chilled by the fire - exactly what the doctor ordered.