Sydney on a Shoestring

I'm home sick today (think I might be getting some new found abs thanks to this nasty cough I have) so I've finally managed to get this finished

We did an insane amount of stuff. It was crazy, fun and exhausting all at the same time. If you're interested, get comfy cause I’m going to make is ASAP (as short as possible) but it might be a loong one!

Friday – we’re off!
We got up at 3:30am and headed out to the airport.
Had a few glasses of bubbles on the plane (yes, at 7:30am…)
Watched Slumdog Millionaire (great movie).
Arrived into Sydney at 8:00am local time.
They don't even X-ray your bags in this country; they just believe you when you say you don't have anything illegal. Cool.

We head from the airport to Wildlife World. Andrew had been to Australia but never seen a Koala.. weird, right? It's pretty much the first thing you do when you go to Aus, but anyway, we did that. You can't hold them in NSW but you can in QLD (random piece of useless information that I didn't know about). So, while we were there watching the ‘roos just chilling out a male kangaroo came hopping up to us, sat up and started scratching his balls - typical man. I think Andrew and I laughed about this for a good half an hour. Good times. Probably a piece of the trip you didn’t need to know about but it was funny at the time.

Then we had to go next door to the Sydney Aquarium because Elysium wanted a toy Dugong (if you’re like me and are thinking WTH is a “dugong” click here). She saw them on the website when Andrew was looking for things we could do (have I not mentioned that Kel & Lysie knew about this trip and they didn't even tell their own mother? Traitors!) Anyway, she thought they were sooo cool so we had to go check that out for her... :)

By then it was well and truly time for lunch so we went to a cafe in Darling Harbour and ate and drank (too much)... Then we pop back to the hotel and check in. It is AMAZING. We have 2 free kangaroo toys in the room (score, no need to get the girls a present now!) We had a view of the harbour bridge and the Opera house.. the bed was DEVINE. Andrew tells me to put on some "versatile but nice clothing" I hate not knowing where I'm going just in case I'm wearing the wrong thing. Turns out it's a bike ride around Sydney.. I am less than enthusiastic about it BUT it turns out to be fun, not hard at all and a good way to get an idea of all the different places. We get back to the bike place (I have a very sore ass at this point, it lasts until Monday...) and go 2 doors down to a wine tasting place where we have about 8 different tastes of wine each and then I find out we are going upstairs to a little wine show.. I am forced (kind of) to have another 6 samples of wine and by the time I leave I am feeling rather happy.

We go to dinner in The Rocks at this awesome place underneath (not literally but almost) the bridge, overlooking the harbour and Opera house. Dinner, dessert and a couple bottles of wine later we stumble back to the hotel.. It's 11:30pm SYD time (1:30am NZ time and we'd been up since 3:30am the morning before, yikes...) We sink (literally) into the bed. Heaven.

Saturday morning we get the Bondi Explorer out to Bondi Beach. I have watched Bondi Rescue before so it was kind of funny to see it in "real life" and the fact that the water is sooo clean cnsidering how popular it is, is pretty cool.

Guess what Andrew has planned for us at Bondi? A nice swim? Some sunbathing? Wrong and wrong again. We're going surfing. He's kidding right? Nope. I am persuaded into putting on a wetsuit and blue rash shirt and carrying a 9 foot long pink surfboard down Bondi beach on a Saturday. Don't tell anyone...

After surfing I felt like a drowned rat we went and had lunch at a restaurant called Nick’s which was right on the beachfront overlooking Bondi. I’m not a huge fan of seafood I don’t like seafood but since this was a holiday which involved doing a lot of new things, and Andrew pretty much begged me to, I tried an oyster. I later decide that Andrew begging me to try one may have had something to do with the fact that it’s an aphrodisiac; actually I’m sure it was to do with that because afterwards he laughed and made a comment about how he knew I’d hate it.
DIS-GUS-TING. Never, ever again.

Finally I get some time (all of one measley hour) to do some shopping at the QVB before we walk back to the hotel and get ready for dinner.

On Sunday morning we went out for breakfast brunch then wandered around Circular Quay before we headed over to the Opera house for a guided tour which was not as boring as I thought it would be pretty interesting. Had some school girls their practicing for a concert that night. Saw not one, but two of them pass out on stage. What a way to spend your weekend. Then it was one last visit back to The Rocks (and the markets) before we had to go back to the hotel and get our bags and head to the airport (where we spent the next 6 hours thanks to our plane being delayed).

So, who wants to go to Sydney?

Sorry about the lack of grammar and sentences in that blog. I am feeling lazy (and sick) and it’s way easier to write like that.