Arrived safely in sydney after our first virginblue flight( better than squeezyjet and ryanhell). Good pick up service for the hostels at the airport( the airporter), only cost 8 bucks each and drops you at your hostel door, our hostel also reinbursed the cost.
Then we arrived in the luvly Noahs City centre backpackers hostel.
What can we say about noahs........ emm not the cleanest hostel we have stayed in, really needs a complete refurb. very shabby and run down. Staff were friendly and a fairly good location, although you do get some nutters hanging around the central railway station nearby.This was our first sighting of aboriginals.....not the best examples Im afraid.....lets say they confirmed to the stereotype that they now seem to be famous for.
Coincidentally we were in sydney just in time for the mardigras parade, so of course it had to be done!.....
Heres us kilted up and ready to go.....

Rather than watching the parade we decided to be in it !.
We got kilted up (thanks to a scottish clan shop over in the drummoyne area), and managed to blag our way into the parade thanks to some nice blokes from the sydney harbour bears club.
Unfortunately it pished down the night of the parade, so we got really soaked but it was quite abuzz to walk down oxford street etc and have 350,000 people screaming at you and to get on tv! ,we had very sore fet and legs the next day, somuch walking and standing about. Heres a pic of Kris with his flag, weve finally got rid of that english thing......lol.. View image
Hes finally crossed over to the dark and tartan side, may the sweaty sock force be with him!
heres another pic of some of the mad mardigras goings on..
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And emm there was this bloke marching with us( despite his build and goateee its definately not david!), Im sure he was a tad chilly in the rain, but good on him!...

Our tiredness was compounded by a stinking hangover from the night before, we got into the mardigras spirit the night before and went skipping and swishing around the bars in our kilts!... and as we very rarely drink these days, we were a tad pished and felt rank the next day!.
The harbour area/opera house and bridge is as good as we expected,View image
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it looks really impressive both during the day and at night. We took a ferry to Manly which gives a great view of thre harbour and is much cheaper than any of the harbour cruises. Manly itself is reallynice,amazing surf beach and nice cafes etc. We also visited Bronte and the famous Bondi beaches. Bondi wasnt really what we were expectingView image
, its a nice big beach but has a slight british seaside town feel about it, hard to describe, parts of it are a bit run down looking and victorian. Ttok a stroll along the darling harbour area and couldnt resist slipping into the IMAX , also continued our cinemas around the world tour by visiting the reading cinema.
Took a trip up the skytower which gives amazing views over sydney and lets you get your head around the geography of the city and areas. Theres also a skytour ride/audiovisual presentation . This was really bizarre and cheesy, it describes the origins of australia and tells how the original european settlers were sent here for stealing a loaf of bread..........thats an awful lot of bread stealing going on !...... interestingly you were permitted to select your language on your headphones, we were informed that there was japanese and germanetc but of course you could choose australian!.......didnt know there was one!....we settled for english.... meeow!..
Took a stroll through the famous botanical gardens which are just behind the opera house basically, they are really nice. Here the massive colony of fruit bats live whch fly accross sydney everynight at dusk...its like something out of a horror film!..
In summary enjoyed our week in sydney, its a very busy city veryt like london in many ways, the rush hour periods are very busy. Weather was very variable, some days unbearable 40 degrees and other days a chilly and rainy 20.
Were now off to the bluemountains for a week, decided to hire a car for the week theres a cheap place next door to the hostel that lets youdrop off for free at the airport - too good to miss.