Rain rain, go away!

Had a pretty miserable few days in Sydney weather-wise! It was a horrible day on Saturday so in the morning all I did was venture out to the supermarket to get some food. I couldn’t believe the price of meat, it was so expensive. So I won’t be cooking much of that while I’m here!

In the afternoon, me and a girl from YHA decided to go to the Royal Easter Show, which to be honest, was a bit of a let down! Definitely not worth the $34 paid to get in. It was mostly tacky stalls and fair ground rides with a couple of rubbish animal shows thrown in here and there! Not impressed!

On Sunday I moved from Sydney Central YHA to Wake Up Hostel. I’m now in a 10 bed mixed dorm! I’ve been lucky so far that no one has been noisy so I’ve slept pretty well. It was a sunny day so I decided to head to The Rocks Markets that I had been wanting to see. There were some gorgeous things - dresses, jewellery etc. I could have spent a lot of money! But I was good and just looked.

After a couple of hours wondering round the market I got the ferry over to Watson’s Bay. I’d been told about a place called Doyles which apparently has the best fish and chips in Sydney, so I had to try it! It definitely lived up to expectations, I ordered a Combo Pack which had calamari, fish and chips. It was tasty!

After my food I decided to have a walk round and stumbled across a part of Sydney Harbour National Park called The Gap. It was a lovely bit of coastline so I walked along and took afew photographs! Even managed to convince a Japanese tourist to take my photo as up until then I had no photos of me in Australia!

Monday was another miserable day, but it was also Anzac Day, which is a big thing in Sydney. It remembers all the Australian soldiers who’ve fought in the 1st World War. So on my way to the Art Gallery of New South Wales (which was very good) I watched the Anzac Day Parade. It was amazing how many people were there marching along the streets of Sydney, all wearing various medals and looking very proud!

Yesterday I went over to Coogee Beach where the OzIntro office is. I met up with a girl in my group also staying at Wake Up and we got the bus. The beach at Coogee is lovely, and the sun actually came out! We took a few photos of the beach then went for lunch at a place called Fives Os where I had marinated steak with chips and salad, for $9.90 - bargain! And it tasted amazing too!

After lunch we headed to the OzIntro office where we used some of the free internet then got our welcome packs including our Aussie sim cards. So my Australian mobile number is now in use! I really can’t wait to start OzIntro this week. Getting the welcome pack with the itinerary made me look forward to it more! I just hope the weather is good! Went out for drinks in the evening with 3 other girls doing OzIntro so it was nice to meet them before we actually start the week!

Today was another rainy day so I went to the Sydney Fish Markets and had some lovely sushi for lunch! Stayed there for just under 2 hours as it was raining lots outside! Had a look round some of the shops in the city centre this afternoon and discovered a really good clothes shop called Cotton On. It’s really cheap and had lots of nice things! So when I need new clothes, that’s where I’ll go!

I need to pack my bag yet again this evening as tomorrow I’m moving to my hostel in Coogee where I’ll be staying for the next 11 nights. I’m looking forward to staying somewhere that has free breakfast! One less meal for me to worry about :) 

Greetings from Sydney!

I am finally here in sunny Sydney!

The plane journey was LONG! I would definitely recommend stopping somewhere on the way as 26 hours is a long time to spend travelling! I set off from Manchester airport at 8:15, landing in Heathrow just after 9am. I boarded a Qantas A380 plane to Sydney via Singapore at 12:05, got to Singapore at 00:41, had an hour an a half to freshen up then got back on the plane and landed in Sydney at about 10:20 (19:20 Oz time!)

I was pretty impressed with the A380 plane. It was huge! Having only been on 747s for longhaul flights I think the A380 is better. The seats seem slightly bigger and recline quite far. There’s a decent amount of leg room (though I am short, so if you have long legs it might be a problem!). One of my favourite things about the plane was the self service snack bar. I only used it to top up my water bottle and got the occasional can of coke, but it meant that I could have a drink whenever I wanted without having to bother any of the flight attendants! The food was also pretty good, especially the beef in black pepper sauce with fried rice – yum! Another great thing was the entertainment screen, there was a massive choice of films, tv programmes, music, games, you could check the news and weather, watch destination guides, check where the flight was, and even view the take off and landing with the tail camera. I only actually watched one film, Due Date, it was pretty good. I was also pleased to see that there were 14 episodes of Mr Bean, so watched a few of those! But I mostly took advantage of the huuuge range of music albums and created a playlist which included: Avril Lavigne, Green Day, Savage Garden, Shania Twain, Nirvana, and the Wizard of Oz, Jungle Book, Phantom of the Opera and Cats soundtracks, and quite a lot more! So I listened to that for most of the journey. Only managed to sleep on the final part of the flight but at least I got a bit of sleep as I wasn’t expecting any!

Anyway, enough about the flight! I’m now sat in my dorm room typing this as a word document so I don’t use up internet time writing this, not sure what time I’ll actually post it. I’m staying in Sydney Central YHA which seems really nice so far. It’s clean which is the main thing!

I got up this morning at about 7am so after showering, breakfast etc was out in the city at 9am! I decided to head straight to The Rocks as I’d read about a really good market there, but as I was about to discover, very little is open on Good Friday in Sydney! Even the tourist information was closed and the only other day it closes is Christmas day! So I decided to have a look in the Museum of Modern Art which was quite good, there was a photography exhibition on which you had to pay for, so I didn’t bother with that, but I looked at the rest of the collection. Then I did the touristy thing and took a load of photos of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House! The weather was so warm and sunny so my photos all have a lovely blue sky! I then strolled through the Botanic Gardens where I saw lots of interesting plants and trees with bats in them!

My next plan was to go to the supermarket to get some food, as surely the supermarket would be open on Good Friday? Turns out it isn’t! So I had to go to 7-11 (kind of like Spar or Londis) to get some expensive orange juice, and didn’t bother with food! For lunch I went to a food court in the shopping centre above Paddy’s Market. It’s pretty reasonable, you can get a meal for between $6 and $15 (£4-£10). I then had a quiet walk through Chinatown then decided to come back to the hostel at about 3pm as I was tired!

Not sure what I’m going to do tomorrow, probably head to the supermarket first thing, then might go back up to The Rocks to see the markets!

At the airport...

The day has finally arrived. I've said all my goodbyes and I'm currently sat at Manchester Airport taking advantage of the 30 mins free wifi to pass the time. I've still got about 35 mins til boarding. 

Managed to pack my bag on Monday with some help from Phil, my stepdad. I'm pretty sure I've got too much stuff, but won't really know what I need til I get there. Luckily OzIntro offer free luggage storage for the year in their office so if there is something I don't need then I can always leave it there, or post it home.

I'm feeling pretty nervous at the moment, I'm not a fan of flying so I picked a pretty silly country to go to really! I think I'm more scared of the flight then actually being in Australia on my own!! But I am looking forward to experiencing the A380 plane. It says on the Qantas website that The Kings Speech and Toy Story 3 will be two of the many movies on the onboard entertainment system so I'll probably watch those!

Anyway, don't want to spend too much more time writing this so I'll leave it with a picture of my very full bag!

Next time I update I'll be in Sydney!!

1 week to go!

Can't believe that this time next week I'll be at my hotel at Manchester airport, then the day after I'll be flying to Australia! Doesn't seem long ago that it was over 100 days!

It's all starting to feel real now. I finished work on Saturday which felt pretty strange. Before this job I'd only ever worked weekends when I was in school/college. This is the first job I've had where I've been in work 5 days a week with the same people. So in a way it was quite a sad last day! Had a few drinks with work people that evening which was nice.

I had a bit of a dilemma last week when I found out there were only 3 other people booked onto OzIntro at the same time as me. A few tears were shed as I've paid a lot of money to do this and the whole point of booking with OzIntro was to be put in a group and make some new friends, and the bigger the group the more likely it is that there will be people I get along with! I quickly sorted it out though, and have moved to the group starting on the 2nd May, rather than 25th April. The other 3 girls in the original group have also done the same. So instead of a group of 4, I'm now in a group of 13! It does mean I've had to sort out accommodation for an extra week in Sydney before I start, but I don't mind that too much. I've booked to stay at Wake Up hostel for 4 nights (after my 3 nights at the YHA - couldn't afford more nights there!), then I'll stay at Surfside Backpackers, Coogee (the OzIntro hostel).

So I've got a pretty busy week ahead of me. I'm going to Chester with my mum and sister on Saturday for a day out, and to pick up any last minute essentials! Got a doctors appointment tomorrow to get a couple of prescriptions. Sunday is Mum's birthday so we're going out for a meal. Then I need to see family, sort out random stuff like exchanging money, photocopying all my important documents, backing up everything on my Macbook, and actually pack my backpack!

I'll probably post on here just before I leave so there will be one more update before I finally get to Oz!