Hi everyone!
Sorry we have been so slow making posts recently.. it has been a very rough past week! We have both been quite sick with a cold/flu like bug and we are in England now – so everything is COLD! This will be the last post about Australia; however, there will be many more to come on our adventures in England.
We arrived in Sydney by bus.. a 14 hour overnight marathon. This is where we began to get really sick. It started off well, we each had our own two seats that were quite comfy. We both enjoyed a few hours of driving before we slowly dozed off into a nice comfortable sleep. About an hour later is where the fun began! We both woke up FREEZing cold. For some reason the AC was set to make the bus like 10 degrees?! Luckily we had some sweatshits (sweatshiRts; thank you sean 
) and we put them on and huddled up and were able to fall back asleep. Half an hour later after this.. we both woke up boiling hot! Sweating out of every pore in our bodies! The bus must have been 30 degrees and we were wearing long pants and sweatshirts! We looked at each other, completely confused, and quickly shed our sweatshirts and hiked up our pant legs in a big to be comfortable. As we tried to doze off into an uncomfortable sleep again.. the crazy bus driver struck again! He put the AC on again and it quickly became super cold again (and of course, we were drenched in sweat). Anyways… this fiasco continued for about 5 hours, until we got a new bus driver about halfway to Sydney. After enduring this amazing temperature variance for so long, and already having the sniffles, we were quickly becoming very sick. At the 3am break, we tried to down some hot tea and we bought the gas station out of cough drops as we attempted to stave off our fevers. This seemed to work ok, but we were still worse for wear.
We arrived in Sydney at 11:30am, with about 3 hours sleep each. We grabbed our bags and went to the information center to inquire about hostels nearby. After that was a complete flop, we decided just to wander around and try to find one. After walking for about 15 mins, we ran into a nice looking one called “Wake Up”. We went there for the night, even though it was quite expensive at 34 dollars a day. Shortly after checking in the fun began again! Matt realized he didn’t have his camera! He had left it on the bus. With that, he ran off towards the bus station (this was about 2 hours after our bus ride). He went to the Greyhound desk and started filling out their millions of forms for lost baggage – neither of us had a lot of hope we were going to get the camera back. Soon he was talking to an agent who was busy phoning around trying to see if the camera had been found. Luckily for us, the bus driver had found the camera on the sidewalk and picked it up! (thank you Greyhound and the bus driver!! Free plug on our super popular blog!) With that we breathed sighs of relief, knowing the camera would be on its way back to us soon! We left the station and decided to wander around downtown Sydney. We went down to Darling Harbour to explore the very touristy part of the city. It was amazing! They had so many things going on.. One being a giant auto show which included a 4×4 off road track that the trucks/suvs were demoing their vehicles on. We walked around the museum (outside of course, we were too cheap to go in) where we saw an old Destroyer, a Tallship and a Submarine! We also went through the Sydney Chinatown where we went to a little market (it was just like Richmond!) We were thinking of buying made boomerangs, digerydoos and other authentic Australian souveneirs – all of which were made in China! (of course) It was a really fun day (very touristy of course!), and we were very tired by the end of it.
We wandered back to our hostel and had a very quiet evening.. we were both in bed by 9pm (after we watched Back to The Future 2!) being that we had barely slept. It was Octoberfest at the bar (very sad that we were too tired to go, we know) and our roomates stumbled in drunk much later, but we managed to sleep through most of their shinanigans.
In the morning we decided to switch hostels and try to find somthing cheaper. We bought a bus tour which you can hop on and hop off, and made our way to Kings Cross – the more exciting part of town (in its special way). We found a hostel and dropped our bags off and then continued our tour of the city. We went to the Sydney Opera house (yes there are pictures of all this.. not like the day before when we didn’t have a camera) which was amazing! The whole roof is made out of tile! It took over 10 years to build. We also wandered through the Sydney gardens.. which reminded us very much of Stanely Park. The park is located right by the ocean in a cove… which has a sea-wall all the way around. There were ducks everything, and instead of Canada Geese, they have these funny looking annoying birds. And instead of suckers swimming in their disgusting brown murkey pools.. they have eels. It was quite the experience! We also went to Bondi beach! It was almost a perfect horseshoe, surrounded by rocks! It was one of the nicest beaches we have ever seen (but it was incredibly packed with people). The full list off all the things we saw is here, along with a map:
With that, we had another quiet night. We met our roomates, a German girl and a Italian guy, and we went to bed.
The next day, we had it in our minds to do some walking! This was our last full day in Australia, and we were going to make the most of it! We walked to the Sydney Harbour Bridge and all the way across it! It was a fantastic huge bridge! Unfortunately the whole thing was quite cordoned off, and it was hard to get good pictures. We then headed back to our hostel.. Chris went ahead to look for food while Matt stayed and took some pictures of the sunset.
As it was our last night, we decided we were going to party! We got a box of goon and started downing it, with the full intentions of hitting the town and having a great time. Instead, we ended up having way too much fun with just our roomates, and we got really drunk and just hung out with them all night. You may be able to tell from some of the pictures that we were a little inebriated. We will miss you goon! Hopefully one day Canada brings in the 10 dollar boxed wines too.
In the morning we caught a shuttle the airport. We were kind of sad.. leaving Australia after 6 weeks in the great country, but we were both excited to see England! It was a long trip.. about 45 hours of flying/sitting in airport terminals (with very limited sleep) and this ended up making us incredibly sick. On the bright side, we had a great time on British Airways, where they had mini TV’s for each seat, where you could choose which movies you wanted to see or even listen to brand new albums or watch TV series! Anyways, we arrived in England at around 11 am on Tuesday where Madeleine and her mom picked us up. With that we will end this blog.. with more to come of course. Matt and Chris will each be doing an individual post on the Australia trip.. giving their thoughts and feelings towards it. We will also do a post on what we have done in England so far.
Also, as a final note. Chris will be leaving Matt next week.. on the 31st to go travel around Europe. He has flights booked to Rome, Amsterdam, Paris, and Sweden.
Take care everyone! Sorry for not making many posts lately, and thank you for reading our blog! The pictures will be up soon!
Chris and Matt
Oh ya, nothing makes me feel better after waking up super cold than a sweatshit. :p
Glad to hear that you both had a good time “down under”. I hope that real life doesn’t treat you that badly.