Everybody needs good neighbours!

Don't be fooled.....the sign was FAKE!
'Carmella'... she smelt lovely and I told her
Outside Harold's house! His 'crib', if you will

We went on a tour of Ramsay street! It was really good and we got to meet some chick who plays 'Carmella'. Having not watched it since the years of Jim Robinson I'm not so up to date but it was really good! We got to see the street which was tiny and where they film and our bus even had old school episodes on it! Ha ha!

Tennis tennis tennis tennis!

Jankovic vs Razzano

Check dem guns! Nadal vs Simon

Rod Laver arenaSerena, She's got a big arse
Henin Love it!

Melbourne

In Melbourne we are staying in a place called St Kilda (if I hear it referred to as 'hip' one more time I will go mad) which is right by the beach and quite nice. The only problem was arriving at our hostel late at night we were greeted by a guy puking outside our dorm room in a booze induced mess. St Kilda is nice though and got some cool bars and restaurants. Melbourne centre is only a tram ride away and is nice, but only about the size of a town really. It's quite unique so I like it, but of course I would say that as the tennis is DOMINATING this place! I love it! We went on the first Friday to the Aussie open and we saw Nadal, Henin, Jankovic, the Williams sisters....not an Brit player in sight! It was really good, a lot different to the stuffiness of Wimbledon but well....it was different! Of course it was great to easily get such good tickets and we saw some really good tennis baby!

A few differences in Oz

One eye was continually looking for us. Pint on left, Schooner on right, tard in the middle

Australia is similar to Great Britain in many ways, but also very different. For example they have our Queen on all their money, yet the notes are made from PLASTIC! Apparently this is useful when making the crucial mistake of washing your jeans with a tenner in them! If you go to a restaurant, many of them boast that they are BYO! Yes people, Bring Your Own booze! So you just waltz in there with your bottle of red and ask for a glass! More confusing however is that you can't just walk down to your local Tesco's and buy a cheap bottle of wine or beer....we spent hours walking round Woolworths (a supermarket here..I know...stupid!) trying to find the booze ailse to realise that it was dry as a bone. Apparently in Oz most places aren't licenced to sell booze other than off licences. So we have been frittering away our hard earned cash there! Despite the heavy drinking image that the Aussies have, they can't even handle a full pint either. We were in some bar and we met some Aussie boys who were quite smashed and talking away at us whilst drinking their beer. They were drinking 'Schooners' which are the equivalent of pints, but only about 2/3rds the size. So we challenge these boys to go and order a pint, which they do, and one of them comes back marvelling at the huge size of this pint, dwarfing the stupid schooner, and says the quote of the year.....'Aussies are girls'! That's correct. On a final note, Burger King is called 'Hungry Jacks' in Australia. I say no more.

Canberra

Many pub quizzers may be interested to know that Canberra is in fact the capital of Australia, not Sydney. For this reason we thought it would be worth the 4 hour coach journey from Sydney and we booked 4 nights in the capital. How wrong we were. We were staying right in the city centre and we walked around and there was no one.....not even a noise....tumbleweed could quite easily have rolled on through and it wouldn't have seemed odd. There really wasn't much to do and even looking around the city at the shops it was growing more and more like Maidstone with every turn of the corner, and this is the capital of a country about 50 times the size of England! After our first day of mooching we decided to attempt to find something to do, and walked about 4 bloody miles in the baking heat to their new Parliament building. It was so fancy! We went inside and saw the House of Representatives and the Senate, it was all very modern, although all taken off from our Houses of Parliament (ha!). By the time we got back we felt this was enough sight seeing for one 'Capital', and went to a bbq held by the hostel. As they probably find plenty of unsatisfied 'Captial seekers' staying in the hostel they provided us with lots of booze and then for some reason our table won a box of wine. It may be made with eggs and fish parts but it was free so we took advantage. Before long we were well on our way and Nic, proving once again to be a hit in Oz, was hit on by Scott, the overweight hostel worker and part time ranch hand, complete with no teeth, using such fantastic pick up lines as 'What do you mean you don't have a boyfriend'?!?! Ha ha ha ha ha. Whilst I left Nic to suffer I talked to some 50 year old Pakistani called Burt about Buddhism. For ages. The things we do when we've had a few!

Nic....a hit down under!

Nic is doing well with the Aussies so far. She was merely walking along the street the other day in her bikini and no word of a lie.... someone yelled out of their car at the top of his voice 'NOW THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT'! Clearly she was graced with big boobs for a reason. Ha ha ha ha ha ha

Bondi Beach

Bondi beach is pretty famous so we went along one day and got our tan on. If I'm honest it was not as we thought it would have been but it was really nice. The waves were so huge we went in the water for a bit and had to retreat because our swimwear had been, ahem, dislodged one too many times. You can't go for a tranquil swim put it that way!

New Year

New Year in Sydney is one of the best and along with that if you want to get a good view of the fireworks you need to be very very organised! Some of the girls from our room set off at 11am to go to find a spot for midnight, we weren't quite so motivated. We rolled out of bed at about midday and walked down to the harbour to find that pretty much every spot had been taken already, so we thought it was time for action. So we went home. And cracked open a bottle of wine. Hours seemed to pass and by the time we thought it would be good to go out it was 8pm, and we had also managed to adopted a Dutch girl from our Hostel called Marianne. I think she was pretty scared by us but we gave her beer so she seemed to turn our way! We walked down to the Rocks area right by the bridge and we took our own secret squirrel bottle of wine to drink away the night. There was a pub playing music into the street so we danced along in the street until it was time to bag a spot for midnight. The fireworks were incredible and it was the best New Years ever, they really put some effort in and everyone was loving it.

Sydney

The harbour bridge and two hotties

Yep, Nic's the one in the orange!

L'opera House!

We treated ourselves to an all you can drink boat ride

For New Year's week we moved down over to Sydney city centre, not far away at all but very different from the beaches! Our hostel was located right in the middle of town which was great and we could walk pretty much everywhere. We went to Darling Harbour and saw an Aborigine playing the digeridoo, he made animal noises with it and everything which just defies logic but he managed it! We went to the Opera House as well which was very impressive and set right against the Harbour Bridge and the water it looked fab! We also went to a place called 'the Rocks' which is right by the Harbour bridge and where the first European settlers came to Australia, and we learnt that you'd be shipped Down Under for merely stealing a loaf of bread in those days! The area has lots of nice bars and places to eat so we enjoyed it! Whilst on a trip to the Opera House we also got a little bit involved with the locals..we were walking along minding our own business when some street perfomer was looking for someone to join in with his 'show' and suprise suprise he chose Nicola. Next thing I know Nic is on the floor as this guy cycles round her and some other lads juggling knives. She survived.

Christmas

Mince Pies and beer on the beach

Santa hats and bbq on the beach....whatever next!?!

Christmas Day was spent in Coogee beach which was a really nice day. We woke up late and cooked ourselves bacon sandwiches before heading down to the beach. As soon as we got there we realised the weather wasn't as great as we first realised and went back to get a jumper and some wine to warm our cockles! So there we were, drinking wine, eating mince pies, listening to Christmas tunes on the Pod, watching other people running around with Santa hats on....on the beach. A hot Christmas is so so odd but it was good fun! We stayed there all day and then in the evening we went out in Coogee to find some food. I hate to tell you but the only restaurant we could find was Thai, and so somehow, the Thais are still mugging us off, and we're not even in their country!

Arriving in Australia

We had to fly from Singapore to Sydney with a quick stop off in Melbourne, and as we got there we had been flying all over night and yet were still a long way from our hostel. We're staying in a place called 'Coogee Beach' which is about 15 minutes from Bondi beach and a quiet suburb of Sydney. in order to get to our Hostel we had to call some random old guy called 'George' to come and fetch us and then take us to our accommodation from the airport. After misunderstanding the 'I will pick you up from the Horseshoe' agreement after about 2 hours we found him and got whisked to Coogee! We have our own teeny tiny little room with 2 bunks but its all quite nice and we can see the beach from the Hostel. There are lots of Irish here though for some reason, so many so we are wondering whether anyone is actually left in Ireland this Christmas!

Hostel hostilities

Having to live in such close proximity to other travellers can take its toll. Sharing a teeny tiny room with 5 other girls stops getting funny when one comes in in the middle of the night absolutely smashed, ever so not carefully climbing up to their top bunk via your head, and when one wakes at the crack of dawn to straighten their hair. A couple of incidents were illustrations of this in our hostel in Sydney city centre. Just before New Year 2 girls moved into our room, however there were 3 lots of baggage. We didn't see them all day until they came in at about 1 in the morning and a blazing row started! It turns out 2 of them were travelling and 1 had come out to visit just for a holiday and was having to stay in a separate room to the other 2. The row was because the girl on holiday kicked up a fuss about staying in a room with 'other people' and branded herself not 'strong' enough to stay in a hostel (that is a direct quote people) and about an hour of Essex accent arguing and she stomps off, checks in to the Four Seasons hotel, and that was the last seen of her! Apparently about 2 days after arriving she just flew back home! The second incident to me was particularly disturbing, yet the next morning seemed to be a bit more amusing thank god. This time the perpetrator was a Geordie, after we had got rid of everyone else from our room, we were left with this one solo traveller. However she stumbles into our room at about 11pm too drunk to even notice her Ant from her Dec, and just collapsed on the bare bed underneath Nicola. We thought the weirdness was over, but at about 1am she grabbed all her stuff and switched beds, apparently nearly getting into my bed (my cocoon of a duvet shielded me from seeing this), and made the bed next to me with meticulous detail. Then she kindly stripped all of her clothes off, walked around the room a bit, turned on the light so we could get a proper glimpse of the birthday suit, and then collapsed once again. Hostels...funny when you look back on them.