I flew from Christchurch, NZ to Sydney Australia and spent the last 4 days in Sydney. My first day here I did a walking tour of the city led by my hostel. We walked through Chinatown, Darling Harbour, Circular Quay, the Botanic Gardens, several parks, and parts of the Central Business District. We saw the Harbor Bridge and the Sydney Opera House - the one main downside is that it poured down rain for much of the day. But I met some nice people from my hostel and ended up going out for great Thai food with some of them. The next day I went on a day trip to the Hunter Valley to go wine tasting. We stopped at a national park just outside Sydney and went for a walk. I saw a wallabee and the nest of a funnel web spider which is the most poisonous spider in the world. We then tasted at 3 wineries.
Yesterday I did a day trip to the Blue Mountains. We stopped first to do a 1.5 hour walk to Wentworth Falls and then ate lunch. After lunch we drove to a different part of the park and did a ~2 hr walk (including 1000 stairs down to the bottom of the valley) and saw the 3 sisters and Katoomba falls along the way. At the bottom I did the rainforest walk and then took the scenic railway back to the top (world's steepest railway- 52 degrees). I have to say it was a bit scary.
This morning I took the bus to Bondi Beach and did the coastal walk most of the way to Coogee. It was pretty. Then I came back into central Sydney and walked around the Rocks which is the originally settled part of Sydney with lots of historic buildings. I explored the Royal Botanic Gardens as well and saw lots of large bats and a big spider. The Gardens are really pretty. I then went up to the top of the Sydney Sky Tower which had nice views of the city. Then I took the ferry to Mosman Bay and I hoped to do it at sunset but was a little late so it mostly dark already. I did get nice views of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. Tomorrow I fly to the Sunshine Coast.
