Sydney Australia!

We made it to Sydney! Again, and I know this is becoming a habit, sorry for the delay, but I'm lazy. We ended up staying nearly a week in Sydney as we were glad to be in a big impressive city and out of a camper van for a change. We stayed with the bould Niallo in Manly for two nights. Niallo is a good buddy of mine from Galway and he and his flatmate Ashlee were good enough to put us up for two nights in Manly, which is a swanky suburb of Sydney. Having a real bed to sleep in was bliss! We checked out Manly beach in the morning - a short walk from Niallos place - imagine being able to stroll down to this every morning!

We stayed in a cool hotel in Ultimo for two days afterwards (a belated birthday present from me to Su - we vegged out and ate junkfood... again). We did manage to make it out and wander around Sydney - the highlight for me was Darling Harbour (we went to the biggest IMAX cinema in the world - 8 stories high!). Then we tried the other end of the scale and stayed in Kings Cross - in a room the size of a closet with bunk beds. Couldn't get out of there fast enough really. Didn't bother taking any photos of the roaches or the dodgy television. For a change of pace we booked into a better place in Bondi Beach for two nights - one day of sunning ourselves on Bondi beach (topping up the tan!) and a night on the town with Niallo, starting at the Opera bar (near the Opera House) where we finally managed to take a few more photos:

Su and myself first:

Hmmmm... beer. And the three of us:

Then as night fell (and the fruit bats came out flying overhead - seriously), Su got this one of the Opera House:

There are better things to be doing than taking photos in Sydney - needless to say we had a long and boozey night. You can't beat it. Our plan was to leave Sydney by getting a relocation deal to Melbourne. Relocation deals are when you pay a camper van company a nominal amount of money to relocate their camper van back to it's home depot. You have only a set (small) amount of days to get it there but it's much cheaper than hiring a car and you get a nice camper van to stay in while you do it. The plan was to get one from Sydney to Melbourne, then one to Melbourne to Adelaide, and then from Adelaide to Alice Springs. However, after arriving at the depot in Sydney early in the morning, we were told that the camper van was involved in a crash and we couldn't have it. Bummer. As we still had to make our way to Melbourne and pick up the next camper van from Melbourne to Adelaide (in a few days), we ended up getting an overnight train to Melbourne (not a whole lot of fun trying to sleep with crying babies, not enough leg room etc). But we made it! We're here in Melbourne now but as we haven't even taken one photo, I'll get on the case and update in a day or two. Melbourne is great so far though! The landlady of the hostel we are in at the moment has friends from Tuam! Murphys apparently - had to pretend I had an idea who they were. Great fun!