The two of us arrived to Sydney Central station an hour early so grabbed a coffee and took a seat to wait for Amy who was supposed to be meeting us at the station when the bus came in. Because she had got the same bus the day before, she had known it would be early, so before long she joined us and we made our way over to Sahil's flat (less than 10 minutes walk) where the three of us would be staying that night.
He was of course asleep when we arrived, so having woken him up and signed in to the building we got ready for the day and then headed out back to the train station at about 8.40am. We got the train out to the Blue Mountains which are about 2 hours away from Sydney by a double decker train. The four of us took a very long and very tiring (so many stairs) walk around the blue mountains. The views were absolutely beautiful and it was definitely worth the hike. We were also very lucky with the weather as it was sunny and clear, unlike some of our other days in Sydney.
We arrived back to Sydney at about 6 and took a walk down Miss Macqueries Point which has the famous view of the opera house with the harbour bridge in the background. Amy had seen the opera house the day before in the light but also wanted to see both at night. It was so weird seeing it in real life when I'm so familiar with the image from TV and films. It was the same as seeing the Eiffel tower for the first time - just unreal. After that we returned to Sahils for the evening where we had a very fancy McDonalds dinner, as in Australia you can design your own burger at Maccas. It was very exciting and definitely one of my better McDonalds, if not one of my best burgers.
Amy left us early the next morning for Adelaide where she's spending the weekend with her Great Aunt and family so for the day it was just Kate, Sahil and I. We had a leisurely morning which involved cooking up a fantastic full english breakfast and then headed out for the day. The first stop was the shops to buy some cheap ugg slippers. Because they make ugg boots here they sell them for about 1/4 of the price we pay so Kate and I both got a pair for way cheaper than we would normally pay, and they are so comfy its beautiful. After that we headed to the harbour to see it from a different angle and from the light. We spent a while walking around the area, walking the stairs of the opera house and having lunch (despite the best effort of some horrible seagulls).
Next up we took the choo choo express train around the botanical gardens. Despite being a little lame, it actually turned out to be a fantastic way to see around the whole garden in a short space of time, especially as we were so tired out at this point. We also heard more about the garden than we would ever have known if we had just wandered around aimlessly. The weather in Sydney hadn't been fantastic and at this point it started hammering it down. We eventually were able to walk back and after dinner (a pasta bake) we headed to the cinema to watch the new Jungle Book.
On the Saturday morning Becki joined us again from Surfers Paradise and we headed out for the day. We first went to the Rocks market for a while where we had lunch and then hung around the harbour for a while again. In the evening we headed to Darling Harbour to watch the weekly firework display. The fireworks were great and after we wandered around the harbour had some drinks at a bar.
On our final day in Sunday we spent the day at Bondi Beach. We got the train there and then a bus which took about half an hour. We had fish and chips on the beach and we took a walk from Bondi to Congee beach which was really nice. We spent the evening packing up and getting ready to leave which was very sad. Our flight the next day was at 7am so Sahil walked me over to the hostel the girls were staying at for 5.30am where we caught the shuttle to the airport and we were away.
