Sydney and Melbourne

During the second week of our two week midterm break (I love this school schedule), I met mum in Aussie! We had a great week of sight-seeing, eating, and of course, shopping! I flew direct from Christchurch to Sydney (at 7am) and then had the joy of getting held up at immigration in Sydney, apparently because of some problem with my Canadian passport. After getting told by a man in an official uniform that he was “sending me home” (although I’m not even sure where he would send me) I was able to leave his little office, collect my bags and walk out into the sunshine of Sydney. The first thing I noticed is that Australia is, overall, much warmer than New Zealand. In Sydney we took in all the sights, the famous Opera House, the Rocks (cool market area), Circular Quay, Darling Harbour, the SkyTower…the list goes on. We took the ferry to Many, a cute little beach town about 30min from downtown. One night we saw the Sydney Symphony perform in the Opera House which was impressive to say the least.
After our whirlwind tour of Sydney we flew to Melbourne (on the southeast coast) for a few days. I really enjoyed Melbourne, although I think I preferred Sydney! We checked out the downtown area which includes Bourke Street mall, an outdoor pedestrian mall, and the Immigration Museum a really cool interactive museum that tells the story of people who settled Australia…the convicts and all. We also spent a day down at the beach in St. Kilda- complete with a great boardwalk and cute cafes!
We had 6 great days in the land of Oz which definitely wasn’t enough time to see even half of what there was to see…and that’s just in two cities! I’ll be going back for sure…

cheers-

s.

Downtown Sydney, Circular Quay

Sydney Opera House + rainbow



Harbour Bridge, Sydney

Mum checking out the view from the SkyTower, Sydney

St. Kilda's beach, just south of Melbourne