Sydney Week twoooooo!

So it was back to the Ritz, for one week before we were to leave Sydney. After settling back into our lil crappy room as with all the little crappy rooms after a few hours and scattering our bits n bobs around the place, they become home. Living next door to a dominos pizza and about a 5 minute walk from Chinatown, we were sorted for cheap backpacker eats. This week was to be our touristy week, luckily we had the weather for it… MOONSOON weather! It pished down rain for nearly every fecking day that week bar one, the day we decided to go and see something outside of the city, the Blue Mountains tour. For that we had perfect sunny weather.
We set off in a little tour bus from our hostel at like 7amish. On the bus were a couple of fat English girls think “Tracey and Sharon” types. Who munched the day away in the seat infront of us. One English guy who was a bit of a talker and a young family who turned out to be den den deeen.. Oirish! From Kerry or Cork god love them, although the dad was originally from up norfh England and the mum was very chatty and good craic. Our tour guide was a jolly Aussie girl with south American blood in her somewhere along the family tree.

We set off for first stop Wildlife park, where we got to see lots of native animals like Wombats, Kangaroos, Koalas (which, translated from Abo means; “I don’t know.”) We also saw a giant croc, lots of birds and some cool snakes and spiders that kill. Australia contains the most dangerous animals in the world. After the zoo we made a brief stop at a pretty amazing view of all the mountains and bush sprawling out beneath us as far as the eye could see. Then it was onto some really amazing views of the blue mountains at a place I cant remember the name of lol. We went on a bush walk down into the dense bush where our guide showed us lots of cool things like waterfalls that looked like Witches Faces & Sydney funnel web spider holes (luckily they were in hibernation. They can kill with one bite). When we reached the ground level of the bush we had to get a cable car train thingy all the way back up. Now as stated many a time in this blog JAMES DOES NOT LIKE H E I G H T S! this thing was pretty scary. It was like a little roller coaster that came down to pick us up and then simply just gets pulled up the mountain side nearly fecking VERTICAL and at speed. I think it’s the longest vertical train ride in the world or some silly fact. So after a few heart booming minutes we reached the top without the cable breaking and us plummeting to our death as the movie in my head was replaying during the ride. At the top by the gift shop we got to hold and feed some friendly wild birds (see pics). Then it was onto a winery where we got a nice buzz from drinking as many wines as possible in the allocated time. Then it was a whiz through visit of the Olympic village and a boat ride back to Sydney harbour. That was nice as we got to ride directly under the harbour bridge and by the opera house. We ditched the English guy on the walk home when he started to mention he was travelling with his guitar!! Guitar + backpack = hippy. Go hug some trees somewhere else.

For the rest of the week we spent it checking out some nice restaurants in the evenings (“Spice I am” five minutes from us being the best Thai food we ate in Oz) and shopping during the day and checking out various sights in Sydney such as the old part near the bridge and watching silly amounts of family guy and American dad before bed.

Sydney was approaching world cup boiling point as it was their first time in the comp for 34 years. We went out to watch the Japan game, which they won and all went loolaa. The Saturday night Beran and his mate Juggy took me to watch a Sydney swans game which was great fun as we were sitting right behind the goal where Beran and Juggy shouted endless abuse at the mullet on the opposing teams’ (St Kilda) full forward. Also there were shouts of encouragement at a guy playing for Sydney that they went to school with. Then they noticed another guy from their class was an umpire… poor guy got so much abuse from them. After a kebab and more beers we watched the England game and eventually called it a night.

The Sunday was the Winter Sounds festival!! Woohoo we were really looking forward to it. Camp-scarf-wearing Beran and Juggy collected us from the Ritz and we made our way to a pub next to the complex. After a few drinks one of their mates a resident dj about Sydney joined us for the evening. We checked out the end of Luke Fair’s set, then the beginning of DJ Sneak’s set. (he started off with Alan Braxe – Running an old favorite from clubbing days gone by for Trigger and I :o) ) The highlight as expected were Tiefschwarz!!! They rocked it for about 2/3 hours where we bumped into an Irish girl from Clontarf who new Lisa lol.

Then we all ended back in the city for the afterparty, playing again were the Schwarz brothers followed by James Zabiela who was keeping things on a minimal tip..nice! After a few funny faces were being pulled due to excessive drink it was time to call it a night, and that was the last we seen of Beran and Juggy. With the usual onward travel hangover to contend with we battled on to our flight up north to CAAIIRRRNNNNSSSS!.