Sydney

We arrived to Sydney on Saturday 11.2 early in the morning. When I got out from the airplane and opened my mobile I got worried because I had got a lot of messages from different people saying they have important or sad news. Also my mom had sent me a message to call her as soon as possible. At this point I was quite certain something really bad had happened and thought my mom was the right person to tell me the sad news. But I never expected to hear that one of my closest friends had died.

So, our trip in Australia did not really start the way we had planned. When we arrived to the hostel, Katja told the receptionist of what had happened. We got a private room and even one extra night without having to pay any extra money. Of this I am very thankful to Wake Up hostel. The first couple of days in Sydney we just took it easy and I talked a lot with my friends and family via skype and facebook. I made the decision to continue my trip. It has not been easy but I am pretty sure my friend would have wanted me to continue. I also know I can fly back to Finland anytime I want. 

On Monday and Tuesday we took care of all the boring paperwork, such as applying for a tax file number and a medicare card (Australia and Finland has an agreement of free health care!), opening bank accounts and getting Australian phone numbers. As we had payed for a working holiday arrival package (Kilroy) we got some help with all these applications. It takes about two weeks to get a tax file number and medicare card and as we don’t have a permanent address all these documents will be sent to the hostel we stayed the first days. This means that we have to come back to Sydney in two weeks to pick up the documents. And after that the search for exciting fruit picking or farm jobs can start.

On Wednesday we finally got to do some sightseeing; we walked around Sydney and saw the Domain park, Royal Botanic gardens, the Opera house and Harbour bridge. We also walked past an Opal museum and noticed that the entrance is free and of course we entered since we travel on a low budget. The places we saw today were amazing, we especially fell in love with the botanic gardens. On Thursday we went to Coogee beach to meet my friend back from Finland, she has lived in Australia in two months with her brother and his family. We had a really nice day; we were at the beach, had some really good sushi and were just walking around Coogee.  It has been good to be busy to have other things to think about, but every day I have made some time to talk people from Finland and simply think about what has happened.

Lovely touch of nature

An obligatory tourist picture

We checked that they did not have this in the men's toilet ;) hihi

To all our nurse friends!

Coogee!

Katja usually hates sushi ;)

Coogee with Katariina

Gordon's bay - a lovely quiet place

First swim in Australia!

On Thursday we also changed to another cheaper hostel a bit outside the city, Balmain Backpackers.  In here we payed 22,5 d per night in a dorm for four people. At first we thought the place was a little bit weird but as we got used to it turned out to be a really good place. One of the reasons we went there was the free wi-fi but it did not work very well, this was the only annoying thing. On Friday we walked to the centre, about 45min, and went to see Darling Harbour and the aquarium. The aquarium was really nice. It was cool and pretty scary to walk in an underwater tunnel with big sharks swimming around you. Friday night we were thinking about going out but in the end we stayed at the hostel.

A cutiepie trying to fly :)

HELP!

Funny looking fishes in the acuarium...

SHARK!

A monkey in the Darling Harbour children's playground

Another monkey...

On Saturday we went to Manly beach with a girl from Germany. Manly was great but quiet crowded as there was a big surfing competition there. In the evening we went out with some people from the hostel, first to a latin night club called La Cita in Darling Harbour and then to really big nightclub with six floors called King’s cross hotel. It was a good night even if we had some problems to buy train tickets and almost couldn’t continue because of that. On Sunday there was a free short film festival in the Domain park. We went there with a French girl from our hostel. We arrived quite early, around 3 pm, and had picnic in the park. It was really nice with the sun. They started to show the films around 7 pm and of course it started raining before it was finished. So it all ended up in a chaos with a lot of people everywhere trying to hide from the rain. We came back to hostel and were just hanging out in our room. We got some help to use our phones as the internet for our computers, we just need to buy a cable and then we should have internet. Useful! Now we are in the train on our way to Wollongong, it is a small city two hours south from the city, we are staying there with one of my friend’s friend.

Manly beach!

Tropfest film festival

Moi et Manon

Salut!

This is how you cut water melons

Wonderful until it started raining

Every second guy here is good looking, here is the proof;)

A musical moment with the cheese and the guitar

Our first impression of Sydney is that people are really nice here but that it’s a big city and sometimes a bit old fashioned. For example public transport seems to be a bit unorganized, and expensive (even more expensive than Finland!). Also we found out that it is not very easy or affordable to use internet here.





Written by Saara