General Thoughts

I thought it might be interesting to put a few thoughts about Sydney.
A compare on contrast between it and the UK if you will.

THINGS SYDNEY DOES BETTER

• SO much more choice at Macdonalds, KFC, Hungry Jacks (Burger King). There's more than double the amount of burgers and ways you can have your burgers it's quite incredible. Also, it's very cheap.... which could be a bad thing as it's more tempting.
• PETROL!!! - the price of petrol is literally the same in dollars as it is in pounds! i.e. less than 50% of the cost.
• BEACHES - i've gotta mention these, every one is fine white sand and clear ocean! - the waves have differed from beach to beach.... relatively calm at Cronulla and Bondi... to the hugely insane and slightly scary ones at Manly and Coogee.
• STREETS - they are regularly cleaned and you rarely see anything on them.... the odd cock-a-roach... but they even seem slightly clean as they are kinda reddy-brown. The Sydney streets also feel really safe for some reason - we've never felt unsafe walking around at night even on our own. - London on the other hand I prefer not to do this!
• AIR - it's alot less smoggy and poluted here, even in Sydney Central. I havent used my Inhaler for about 2 months which is very cool!
• SWEETS - they seem to have numurous selections of every make of sweets you can imagine, like the Skittles for example have about 7 different varieties of packs. - my favourites are the 'fairground' variety with candy floss, toffee apple, bubblegum etc etc.
• CINEMAS - the seating is beyond luxurious... practically armchairs some of them. It really feels like you have your own space to watch your movie!! - Sydney also has the biggest screen in the whole world... the IMAX - which we plan on visiting tonight.
• WEATHER - it's not quite what was expected... it's like a psyched up version of London weather really, in the respect that it can be hot as anything one minute... then a full on thunderstorm and then in a matter of hours; hot and sunny again! truly crazy.

THINGS SYDNEY HASN'T GOT

• SPIDERS - seriously what a load of nonsense! - I've seen no spiders at ALL in Sydney, which might be because we're on the 51st floor, but otherwise there are FAR FAR FAR more spiders in the UK.... yes ok less than can injure you... but far less.
• CHINESE FOOD - well ok there is a chinatown... but they serve nothing at all like what we're all used to from british-chinese take-aways... no crispy duck (no duck at all from what i've seen), hardly any spring rolls, no chow mein, kung po chicken.... prawn toast.
• CHEAP MENS CLOTHES SHOPS - it's getting quite annoying that there are quite a few of these type of shops for girls... but for men you either have to spend alot... or just not shop at all. So i'm missing top man, river island, burtons, next, new look, esprit. I did splash out on 2 new tops from "YD" which is an upmarket river island... only to find them both in the sale today at 50% off. great haha.
• HARVESTERS TYPE RESTAURANTS - we've been craving the salad carts and carvery style food places.
• CHEAP PUBS - where are the weatherspoons?! - this is why everyone here relies on 'gooners' which is basically boxes of wine... or our recent discovery *passion pop* which is $6 for a champagne sized bottle of reasonably tasting alcohol

On a more general note about Sydney, we've renamed it little Tokyo as it's maybe 90% made up of asians... it's sort of a joke that you won't find an aussie in Sydney. - so we're anxious to get away really.... no offense to chinese and japanese...but I signed up for some AUSSIES! Otherwise it's very nice... although I have to nit-pick about the quality of clothes... the material is great...but the stitching!! - I've had to basically tidy each item up... and on my shorts.... have pinged off 3 out of the 4 fly buttons!!! - Luckily I have an excellent little sewing kit with me!! :)

The following week.....

here's what i can recall about 2nd week

Basically we spent the next week or 2 getting very panicky about

finding a place to live. we stayed at various hostels... the Bondi Beach house YHA, which

seemed rubbish compared to the luxury of Sydney Central YHA, then tried 'NOAH'S BACKPACKERS' which seemed kinda cool from the outside - it's on the top of a hill overlooking

the Bondi Beachfront... but it was slightly grotty and dirty. more than one cock-a-roach (which is the fun way we say it, so it sounds slightly spanish and less creepy).

We shared the room with 3 israeli guys which were very friendly and chatty.

The bunkbeds were literally piled on top of each other, so not much room to manouvere.

the first day when i was coming down from the top of the bunkbed, the locker door decided to open. Which i did see...but as i was already on the way down, gravity prevailed and the corner of the door ripped my jeans... calvins... and arse cheek. (i'll refrain from adding the photo that i just HAD to take of it).

During this time Gemma was visiting Sydney with her work, so we met her at the beachouse and then later had a cheap but nice meal in Coogee which was at the end of *the walk* that we insisted Gemma had to do also. We also went out the next day to a social event that a friend was throwing. - check out the Bondi Back-drop:)

During the next few days we all went to the botanic gardens where we saw the worlds largest fruit bats (actually) and various crazy birds lol.

It was around this time that my Camera decided to die on me :( But with all this bad fortune (arse and camera) we miraculously found an excellent apartment on the 51st floor of the 'WORLD TOWER'. We were initially quite scared of this prospect as it does sound scarily similar to world trade tower.

Here are some gorgeous landscapes I've taken from the balcony :)

Next up it was the turn of Michelle Harris to come visiting. We met her and her friend

Laura in a bar near the Central YHA

And then the next day arranged to meet at Taronga Zoo, where we saw a great amount of Kangeroos, Koalas, Giraffes etc etc i'll just put a few pics here.

Next post will be a more general update and thoughts of Sydney life etc etc.

Here is my blog from the first week, the blogs after this one,
will be far less detailed.

Sunday 12th October/Monday 13th October
Managed to get to Heathrow early and met up with Sarah before checking in, Rachel missed her connecting flight from Manchester, due to fog at Heathrow so therefore missed the flight. Met all the other guys on the flight all of whom seem really cool and friendly types. Had a fun 1st leg of the flight, watching movies, tv shows and chatting. The stop over in Singapore was short lived but after finding the outside smoking area, also labelled the ‘cactus garden’, we managed to get outside to experience the heat (which was very very humid) in Singapore.




























The second leg was a bit less easy to take, with awful food and slightly rude stewards.
When we got to Sydney airport, it seemed as though the singer PINK agreed with us as she was also on our flight, and looked pretty pissed off at baggage claim. After a rather bumpy minibus ride, we got to the hostel by 9pm (approx) and everyone basically decided to have a shower, get changed and meet in the bar (scubar) attached to the hostel for a ‘few drinks’ - which eventually ended up as lots of drinks, with some getting more drunk than others (not me).




Had quite a few, but eventually agreed that sleep was very much needed after such a long flight.

Tuesday 14th October
Everyone from the group agreed that as we were in Sydney, we should walk down the long street to Sydney harbour and see the Sydney opera house. Unfortunately the weather had other ideas and decided to welcome us brits to oz with a lovely downpour of British weather - I.e. lots and lots of rain…. So all of our pictures and also our first impressions were grey and dismal hehe, oh well not what we needed but couldn’t be helped.



We then got the ferry from the harbour to Darling Harbour to go to the Sydney Aquarium, which is apparently Sydney’s number one tourist attraction. Had a fantastic time seeing the many types of fish, crocs and even seeing the sharks up close in the underwater tunnel section.





When we got back we decided to make a group meal of chicken tomato pasta, which was a big group effort… but all put together by me, which was quite a surprise, as it was quite delish J. When we were finished with that, we decided to go to the cinema to watch ‘eagle eye’, a Hollywood film not even out in UK yet I think…. Very good.

Wednesday 15th October
We all got up early to go to our talk with Work & Travel - lots of talk about sharks being misunderstood (apparently more people die of being hit on the head by coconut) and more about bank accounts, tax and also warnings about how to swim safely on aussie beaches. After enough info to confuse us all for days, we went in search of the venue for a free meal and cheap drinks event on the Friday. Got thoroughly lost, but eventually found it, at which point we all needed a snack and a beverage, so we had a couple in scruffy Murphy’s - typical Irish pub. We then came back to the youth hostel and did the deal of the day, which was pizza and a bear for $5 - bargain. Then went out again, to Scubar and then tried the STAR BAR, which unfortunately was a bit dead on weekdays, but had a few hilarious games of Pool nevertheless.

Thursday 16th October
Decided we’d had enough of being cooped up in the city and ventured out to Bondi Beach. Were literally stunned by the view and sights of the ocean.





Had a bit of a walk around, and then did *THE* walk, which is from bondi beach to Coogee, which took about 4 hours and included a cliff-side art festival, with various modern sculptures dotted around the trip, which was very enjoyable. Somewhere along the way we picked up a random guy called Peter, who was also from England and he walked along with us.



When we eventually got to Coogee, it was perfect time for a schooner (I.e. pint). At which point, it had started to get a little bit chilly down on the beach, so we jumped on the bus back to the hostel. Decided to try the hostel café…..bad idea. The chicken was so unlike chicken that I didn’t even eat HALF of the chicken burger…which is saying something.

Friday 17th October
We felt like a walk to see the harbour again, but this time SUNNY - as the weather was still good and we weren’t TOO burnt by yesterday’s sun we walked down to the harbour once more to take many photos of the bridge and opera house.




- on the journey back, we took a different road, and found 100% better and more reasonable shops, so I bought a t-shirt, shorts and my first pair of converse - which were so exclusive that day that they weren’t on the shop floor yet. In the evening, was the free meal at ‘the gaff’, which turned out to be quite bad really, and the drinks seemed to change priced with each order. - after we’d had enough of there we tempted everyone to come out to try STARBAR and a very good time was had by all.



Saturday 18th October
Was woken up at 9.30am by Carly, to be reminded that we had to check out at 10am, which we did and then I preceded to go straight back to sleep once we’d rechecked in - I ashamedly slept in til 4pm. We then decided to go out for dinner to Pizza hut, which was a very strange experience. It seemed the one we’d chosen was *buffet only* and you basically HAD to pay for a set price and then eat all you could :S very strange, but it was ok…nothing by UK standard at all….although the drinks were superior. As the others were still knackered from the ‘heavy’ night before, we went to bed early.

Sunday 19th October
Today was the day for getting the ferry to MANLY - which is the place that they filmed my fave aussie soap - out of the blue. After suggesting we got the train to the ferry point, I was outvoted and we walked. Needless to say we missed the ferry by 2 minutes and had to wait 30 minutes for the next one. After an exciting ferry journey catching the sites of Sydney harbour and surrounding suburbs we got to Manly Wharf at about 11am. The sun at this point was getting nice and warm. We went down the famous ‘corso’ passed ‘Bacino’ (central to the soaps plotlines) and made our way to the beach. It was a lot more commercial than the soap depicted, but it was still pretty gorgeous and the sand was lush. It was a bit busy, and the aussie locals are really quite loud and shouty on the beach - but that was really the younguns.





After a good bit of tanning, me and Sarah went to try to find the police station and also the bowling club, which is also in the soap. It was disappointing to learn that they did not use Manly’s police station in the show, and also that the bowling club…. Well it looked different.



We then decided to make the way back on the ferry, just as the rain started. After trying out the convenience store for food to eat, we renamed it the inconvenience store, as it was so overpriced and bare of essentials that we had to make do with aussie version of pot noodles - which turned out actually to be quite nice.

Monday 20th October
Today was the day for getting stuff sorted. We went to the Work and Travel company for help in finding accommodation, as we weren’t really getting anywhere, but the lady was quite helpful and when we got back to the hostel we managed to find quite a few possibilities - one of them who wanted us to view it that night.
For dinner we tasted something exotic….but not necessarily very nice. - Kangaroo Burgers…. Not to be recommended…. Full of gristle. We then set off to find the house…… oh dear. The area of Chippendale, despite it’s chirpy name…. Was really quite a dump. The house in question, reminiscent of the addams family… or some Hitchcock reject film. We waited a full 10 minutes…. And then did a runner as we really just didn’t feel safe at ALL. After this ordeal some much needed drinks were in order at the scubar.

Tuesday 21st October
After staying over a week in the Central YHA in Sydney, it was time to move on so we travelled with our HEAVY luggage over to Bondi YHA, which is right on the beach, but unfortunately not as posh as the Central… but I’m sure we’ll get used to it. After settling in and a short power nap, we went into Bondi town and had the best meal so far in Oz. Basically a wetherspoons pub, but nicer and we all had burger and chips and garlic bread on the side - with rosé. It was delicious!!! May have to go there again and try another dish.
We then visited our friends who managed to get an apartment very close to Bondi…lucky bastards. - but having seen it, we’re not so jealous. ;) We then went back to our room, to organise tomorrow’s mammoth house hunt.