Tamarama Gully

Today I'm being introduced to my first city open top bus tour (at least I can't remember having done one before). There are 2 routes you can take, the Bondi Tour and the City Tour. With Bondi on our doorstep, we all boarded the bus by the beach. As you get on you get given some headphones and after finding your seat you sit back, plug in and enjoy the ride.

The bus took us North of Bondi and around the coast, past Rose Bay and into the CBD. From here we got some great views of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. In the city we swapped over to the City Tour which took us round to Darling Harbour where we hopped off for some lunch.

Back on the bus after lunch we carried on around the Harbour, past the bridge and through The Rocks, the historic quarter of Sydney. Just past the Opera House, near the botanical gardens we all hopped off again as Tom and Lucy wanted to do a spot of shopping at the Westfield Mall. Our travellers budget doesn't quite stretch to clothes shopping so Simon and I decided to walk through the botanical gardens to Mrs Macquarie's Chair. From here you get incredible views of the both the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. It was a little bit of a walk so by the time we made it back to the mall, they had finished their shopping and we hopped back on the bus to Bondi.

It's our last night with the Thatcher's, so we thought it rude not to have a nice meal out together before they head back to sunny England. The original steak restaurant we tried to get a table at had a 90 minute wait, so not wanting to wait that long we did a quick Trip Advisor search and settled on another steak restaurant further down the road, called Macelleria. It's a butcher / very high end fast food style restaurant where you picked your steak from the counter and then they found you a table and you waited for them to cook it for you. They also do burgers and sausages but we all opted for steak. Whilst we were all waiting patiently in the queue, Tom turned round to me and said 'Hugh Jackman is over there' and OMG there was Hugh and his wife ordering some takeaway steak. Now if Hugh Jackman is eating there you know it's going to be a pretty good god dam steak! Trying to keep our cool and not stare, we sat at our table (fortunately right next to Mr Jackman) and sneakily took a picture. He was a lot more laid back than I imagine LA celebs to be, stood there in his boardies with no shoes on. Whilst there were definitely a few people that twigged who he was, nobody bothered him and just let him do his thing. As you can imagine I was very excited! Anyway, back to the steak. It was quite possibly the most amazing steak I have ever eaten. It was absolutely delicious, especially accompanied by a very nice glass of Pinot Noir. Feeling very satisfied, we headed home with a quick pit stop in Ben and Jerry's for some ice cream.Read more