Epic Round The World Trip Adventures! Stunning Photos & Articles - A fascinating gap year travel journal covering every stop of their journey.

Sydney By Day - East Australia
Gap Year Travel Journal

(12th - 25th May) Sydney By Day
We first went into Sydney via ferry from Manly for a couple of days, which has to be the best and cheapest way to get into the city. The views as you round the headland are amazing – all of a sudden the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge appear in front of you! And it is so much better than we ever could have imagined. We spent another couple of days camping north of Sydney and then had to return Priscilla to her stable – very sad to see her go! But now we started our new adventure staying at a hotel on Hyde Park in the city. We have had long lunches over a bottle of wine and enjoyed the autumn sunshine, and long evening dinners with even more wine – and always with a fantastic view of some kind or another. We ate twice at the revolving restaurant at the Sydney Tower – once by day and once by night. You can never tire of those views and we saw something different each time we went round. Sydney Harbour is huge and very scenic. We did a boat trip around most of it and went right under the bridge. We crossed the bridge on foot and climbed up to the top of one of the concrete pylons at one end where we were rewarded with great views back across the City and the Opera House. The Botanical Gardens are right in the centre of the City and we spent a couple of afternoons strolling around looking at the hundreds of fruit bats roosting high in the trees and the cheeky sulphur crested cockatoos squawking really loud as they buzzed by our heads! The Opera House has been explored from every possible angle and we have even touched the space age self-cleaning cream tiles that cover it. Apparently they couldn’t be white because it would be too glary in the sun! We travelled on the monorail at Darling Harbour and visited the Aquarium where we saw our first Wobbegong and Duck-Billed Platypus.
We were lucky enough to be able to get to spend a day in the Blue Mountains with two of Mike’s three cousins. Nicole and Steve live around Sydney but Tracy lives much farther south so unfortunately we couldn’t get to see her. The last time Mike had seen Nicole she was about 3 years old so it was great for him to get to meet his cousin as an adult and her family, and to catch up with Steven whom he had met out here eleven years ago. The Blue Mountains are a huge mountain range out to the west of Sydney and are so called because the Eucalyptus trees all over them give off a oily vapor that can appear as a blue haze. We went to an amazing viewpoint where we could see the Three Sisters – three huge lumps of rock sticking up on a headland and then onto Scenic World where we took the Cableway down into the World Heritage Listed Blue Mountains National Park. At the bottom we walked through the rainforest and the came to the incline railway to go back up. Now, the giant cable car went down a steep decline but this was nothing compared to the vertical climb back up. This is apparently the steepest inclined railway in the world. You start off laid horizontally at the bottom but as it climbs up the cliff you end up almost falling forward down through the carriage! The two children sat right at the front and thought it was hilarious fun (maybe not for Craig who had to try and hold them back in the seat with his leg!) while Jo clung on for dear life and kept her eyes tightly closed the whole way! After saying our farewells to Nicole, Steve drove us back into Sydney, collecting Kim en route. We got to see their home and to meet their dog Gypsy and then we went into Darling Harbour to eat. We had the most fantastic day guys – thanks so much for organising it and driving so far (especially in all that traffic coming back down). We look forward to meeting you again some day soon - maybe in the UK?!And so the day finally came when we had to say goodbye to Australia – with many a tear shed by Jo! After four months it has started to feel like home and although a part of us is excited at starting out on the Pacific stage of our travels, we are also so sad to be leaving a country we have enjoyed so much.