Oz in a week (Andrea’s Happy Birthday)

February 25, 2011 · Filed under Australia, Written by Andrea, Written by Melanie

We arrived in Sydney at about 11 on Tuesday 8^th February, and it took us three hours to get to our hostel. The skies were grey, and it wasn’t very warm, While we waited hours for our bus to come and collect us at the airport, there was a man there who had been waiting for ages and was whinging and whining a lot about “bloody Australia” spreading his bad mood! We were a little disappointed with the ‘welcome’ to Oz!

We arranged to meet with Sarah (who we’d met in New Zealand and then stayed in Fiji with) for a few drinks that night, she came along with her two friends from Dublin, who live in Sydney, and we had a fair few drinks and laughs in the gayest gay bar in Sydney. Plenty of pink lights, disco balls and drag queens.

The next day was Andrea’s BIRTHDAY!!!! Melanie had bought her a lovely anklet and some Lindor chocolates, which are her favourites – and wrapped them up in ‘Hot Wheels’ wrapping paper, because it was all she could find in the few moments she’d been able to find when Andrea wasn’t looking. The Lindor chocolates had turned to liquid in the centre, because it was hot – so Andrea had a happy birthday morning of liquid chocolatey goodness! We then headed off to Sydney Harbour – we took a lovely walk around the Botanical Gardens to get there, and then came out at the famous viewing spot of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. The sun started to come out (although it was a shame that the clouds hung over the view, spoiling our pictures) and it got very hot. After the usual photos, we had a gorgeous lunch and plenty of wine at the Opera House Bar. We walked around for a while because we had planned to stay out the whole day, in to the night (we had our dresses to get changed in to in our bags!) but we ran out of things to do, and were tired after a boozy lunch, so we made the fatal mistake of ‘nipping home for a quick nap’ … and that was the end of Andrea’s birthday.

We flew to Melbourne on the Thursday, where we had arranged to stay with Melanie’s old school friend Carolyn, but stayed the first night in the city in a hostel. We went in to the hostel bar in the evening, and watched some live music (a fella with a guitar, a foul mouth, lots of talent and a eye for the 18 year old gap year girls who squealed for him on demand!) The next day, while waiting around for the train to go to Carolyn’s house, we decided to go to the cinema to see Black Swan, because it was pelting it down outside. They only had ‘Gold Class’ cinema available, which is a fancy (and expensive) cinema. We weren’t expecting this and in ripped jeans and old clothes, we clearly didn’t look like we belonged. While the film is being prepared, you’re able to sit in their bar lounge and drink cocktails. When the film is ready you are personally escorted to your seats, which recline electronically at the touch of a button (not unlike a fancy dentist chair). We had a small table between our seats with a button, that we could press should we need anything at all during the show.

We then headed off to Carolyn’s for a nice reunion after 13 years, and to meet her family. We had a lovely few days with them, her two kids (Kiran, 5 and Myalie 18 months) they live in a really nice area by the beach, and it was nice to kick back for a couple of days in a nice family home, and to catch up on the old days and who’s doing what!

We then flew over to Perth (we had to, because our outward bound flight was from there) and were only there for about 10 hours over night. We toyed with the idea of sleeping in the airport, but it was lucky that we decided against it as it turned out we were flying out of a different airport! The hostel we stayed in that night refused to give us a wake up call in the morning and our private room had no windows, so we had to rely on luck (we don’t have our phones any more – lost a long time ago, so no means of waking up!) Melanie was up at the crack of dawn and dared not go back to sleep!

And that, is how you do Australia in 6 days!