Another blog update for friends and family in Scotland – Sydney and Wee Ambs! Well we headed to Sydney after being in Shepparton and catching up with people. We were really lucky to have been able to stay with Val and Mr H. They are the nicest people and treated us well when we were there. They made us feel right at home and it was a shame we didn’t get to stay longer. They will hopefully come visit us in Queensland when our house is ready. You can see photos of us with Val and Mr H and of the cool Scottish dolls she’s knitted on flickr.
We also managed to catch up with Ged who sadly had injured his back and was unable to make our lunch meeting. Because of this we ended up going to a place called LeFires (We think!) and had yummy kebab food there. It was great and we headed to Geds after that. He was still the same guy, just a lot less hair! haha
Our trip from Shepparton to Sydney took around 8 and ½ hours and we arrived in a place called Potts Point, near Kings Cross in the early evening. This wasn’t the best time to arrive as the entire place seemed to be strip joints, drunken students and guys, and god knows what else. It looks very seedy and we weren’t too impressed with the hotel either. We were staying at a place called the Devere Hotel on Macleay Street. It was fairly similar to a large dormitory/boarding house, but it was clean enough and fairly cheap considering its central location.
Our first day in Sydney was spent walking to a place called Oxford Street which wasn’t that far away. We were heading there to go to a place called ‘The Bookshop’ which was a gay/lesbian bookshop. As it was Valentines Day, when we walked past the Hard Rock Café, we decided to go in and treat ourselves to some food. We had lovely milkshakes in there and brilliant mac and cheese. As always, the portions were huge and Angela couldn’t eat the combo starter she got as her main. When we got to the bookshop we ended up buying around 10 DVDs that we didn’t have. A word to anyone who might even think of buying any of these, don’t buy one called ‘Aprils Shower’. It is terrible, cheesy and tacky and wasn’t at all funny. We watched it later that night and were pretty disappointed. We ended up going into a local Indian Restaurant for dinner that night and had a vegetarian korma because the chicken dishes are all chicken thighs, not breast meat and we hate that. Still, it was nice enough. We also watched a movie called ‘Do I Love You’, actually we switched it off because it was so rubbish! I think they might be ending up on eBay eventually. One movie that was really great was called Saving Face. It was funny, charming and interesting. Highly Recommended.
The next day in Sydney we jumped in a taxi and headed along to the Harbour and the Opera House. You can see photos of us there, yes you guess it, on our flickr. It was brilliant and very touristy. We decided to hop onto one of the river lunch cruises which lasted an hour and a half and took us all around the harbour. It was lovely and we got to see some places we’d never have been able to see by car. We had a delicious roast beef buffet lunch there and it was beautiful. This area of Sydney is what everyone goes there to see really so it was nice to have done that. We got off the boat in Darling Harbour and went to the Sydney Wildlife Centre which is right on the waterside. We saw some cool things there too and you can check those out those is the previous link, including me holding a bug!!!
After that we went into the city centre and headed up the Sky Tower to get a brilliant view of the whole area. We also went on Oz Trek in there, a simulator ride about Australia. It was okay, not exactly Disney, but still it was fun enough and it was nice to sit in the aircon for a while. When we were walking down the shopping mall area, we saw the original ‘Free Hugs’ guy that has become world famous. It was odd to see him just standing there with his sign, but if you want to see him you can also see him FLICKR!
Although Sydney is great, it’s a lovely place, but again it’s just too big. It takes hours to get into the city centre and there’s so many suburbs that you could live well over an hour and a half outside it and still be considered Sydney.
The next few days in Sydney we spent checking out local places and relaxing. We were becoming more and more excited at the thought of picking up wee Ambs and eventually on the Sunday morning we headed off to a place called Eastern Creek to get her from her one month in prison.
It was easy to pick her up, just signed a few forms and we were taken out the back to a truck that had lots of crates in it. We saw her in her crate and shouted on her. She immediately looked over and froze, almost stunned and confused. Then suddenly she started barking and yelping like never before and going crazy trying to get out. She was just the best and it was great to have her back again. After we’d calmed her down a little and let her walk around on the grass for the first time in a month, we hopped into the car for the journey back to Queensland via Coffs Harbour.