Sydney

We arrived late into Sydney Central train station after our flight from Melbourne was delayed. We stayed the night in a hostel beside the train station and then got up early the next morning to get a train to Katoomba town in the Blue Mountains. Once we arrived we checked into our hostel, No.14 Lovel Street, and had some brunch looking out over the blue mountains. We decided to buy hop-on hop-off bus tickets to bring us around to the sites of the blue mountains.

The blue mountains is a big valley with a rainforest at the base of it. The trail is a path that follows the edge of the cliff overlooking the valley below. It has plenty of steps and stones so it felt like we were on an adventure. There was spots along the way where we could stand and lookout over the beautiful landscape. The main natural attraction is the three sisters cliff rock where you can cross a small bridge over the valley and also the Katoomba waterfall. The steepest railway line in the world is located in the Blue Mountains. It goes down the side of the cliff face at 53 degrees, it was so cool and felt very steep. There is also a cable car and short boardwalk section through the rainforest which was very pretty.

The next day Caroline and Ruben arrived for their holidays. It was so exciting seeing them and nice to catch up over breakfast. She even brought Easter egg presents for us so we were very happy. We decided to join a walking tour of Syndey. It started in the Town Hall and we walked through the streets of Sydney learning about the history of the English being sent to Australia as convicts and developing Sydney. It was interesting. We ended up at Sydney harbour where you have a great view of both the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour bridge. After the tour we walked across the Sydney harbour bridge before getting a ferry to Manly town from Sydney harbour. It was cool to get a different view of the harbour bridge and the Opera house from the ferry.

There was a coastal walk from Manly to Spit that we did in the afternoon. It was a 10km walk that gave a beautiful view over the Sydney coastline. The walk took longer than we expected as it was quite hilly however we ended up seeing a lovely sunset as we walked the coastal walk.

The following morning we walked through the Botanical Gardens on our walk to the Sydney Opera House. We had booked a tour of the Opera House so we got to go inside the opera and drama hall as well as into the large concert hall which was cool. We learned about how a Danish man, Mr Ultron, designed the Opera House and how objections to the building design and funding nearly caused the Opera House not to be finished.

Next we got the bus to Bondi beach and walked the famous tourist beach walking through a sandy beach. It was a beautiful day so the beach was packed and the lifeguards were on high alert for problems in the water.

While we were in Australia we decided to go to an AFL game. Sydney Swans were playing Port Adelaide in the Sydney Cricket Grounds. It was great to try and compare Gaelic football rules to AFL rules although we couldn't figure out what the exact fouling rules were. The game started of slow but got very exciting as the game got tight in the third quarter. Port Adelaide went on to win 94:71.Read more