This morning our day started off quite nicely as we had our typical breakfast of Sydney supermarket’s own brand choco pops and made ourselves sandwiches for lunch and then set off to explore the Australian Barracks Museum. It’s crazy how most of Australia’s history is actually from the aboriginals and so when we learnt about the history of the barracks from our audio guide, I discovered that actually a massive percentage of Australia is British convict descendants (about 75%) because when Australia was governed by England, the English shipped a huge majority of English convicts to exile in Australia, forced to have a life of unpaid labour there. However life for the convicts in Australia was actually better than England, and after they served their sentence they were allowed to integrate into Australian life as free people, thus creating a huge part of Australian population.
The barracks museum was extremely interesting and taught me a lot about Australia, and the way it was governed by the English, that I didn’t already know.
We then moved on and visited the Sydney Botanical Gardens, a vast area of park land, grassy areas and beautiful rose and herb gardens. It was such a lovely way to spend time, relaxing on the grass in the 27degree heat, eating our picnic.
While shopping this afternoon we witnessed the most incredible busker I have ever seen, he honestly had an unbelievable voice and there was a huge crowd building up to watch him, right in the middle of George street.

There was also a promotion on for Essy the nail polish brand and so we got a free manicure there which was so lovely!

We also got a free nail polish which was an food and I finally got jelly shoes! Jelly shoes are literally shoes made out of jelly which I had when I was younger but at 10 dollars I had to get some more!

!

We had such a nice morning, sitting under, having our nails done and listening to buskers AND THEN the cloud of bad luck came and hovered Julie.
So first of all after heading back to or hostel and quickly changing we set off for The Rocks and the Sydney Opera House. At 6pm there was a free walking tour of The Rocks (the oldest housing area in Sydney) before moving on. The tour of the rocks was really interesting as we got to see first hand all the harbours and houses of the pubs and bars we’d learnt about at the museum, so far so good!

We actually suddenly got very hungry while on the tour so left early and snuck away to get some food. We found a cute looking fish and chip place and before Julie had even got her calamari and chips, I’d finished my
Prawn salad. Ketchup in Sydney is very weird as the satchels of sauce do not open, they josh say squeeze on them and some how the ketchup comes out. Julie was pressing down really hard on both sections of the satchel when suddenly I heard a loud pop, looked over and all I could see was her head hanging downwards not moving and no ketchup in the satchel. Slowly she lifted her head and her face and hair and chest and top were absolutely COVERED in tomato sauce. (Apparently they’re the easiest satchels in the world you just press the two compartments together and the ketchup comes out so easily… We were shown this after the disaster) It was a very very funny scenario but only after we’d got most of the ketchup out of Julie’s eyes allowing her to see again.
The plan was so go to the Opera Bar and after meeting up with one of my friends from Whistler who happens to have an internship right on the water (so lucky) Juliet went to the bathroom to freshen up and then we headed down the pier to the Sydney Opera house and it’s bar underneath.

We got a glass of wine and sat by the waters edge and literally had the most incredible views of the whole city and it’s two most iconic features, the opera house and the harbour bridge. An amazing bar to be in.

We then went to the bathroom again to try and get some of the ketchup out of Julie’s hair before heading over to the Glenmoor hotel (it’s so confusing as in Australia the word hotel doesn’t mean hotel it just means restaurant/bar) as it as a rooftop bar. Here we were also lucky enough to get a table right by the edge and so once again we enjoyed incredible views of the whole city, lit up by night.

So all was going well, Julie, Ben and I got the train back to Central station and after getting off and looking at a map very confused we realised that central station wasn’t our stop and we’d actually travelled further away from our hostel than we were before! No worries though as there’s a free shuttle that runs straight down the road we were on, back to our hostel, except… The shuttle service ends at 9pm and it was 11.
We then got on a bus to our stop and while sitting on the bus the driver suddenly said ‘last stop, everyone off’ we panicked again as we needed to get home and if this was the last stop then how would we do that! We got off the bus and got our map out, stressing a bit now until realising that actually that was our stop and we were so close to our beds! Back in the hostel we decided to start packing, however it didn’t go very far as Julie couldn’t find the key for the lock on her suitcase. With all of her clothes locked inside and only her ketchup covered and stained clothes not locked away, this was going to be a problem. After trying to pick the lock with bobby pins and trying to pull it off ourselves, we came to the conclusion that it was going to have to be cut off. Stressed and annoyed Juliet didn’t know what to do. However we went down to reception to see if they had any pliers that we could break the lock with and whatdoyouknow, apparently it happens all the time and the guy at reception whipped out the biggest pliers you’ve ever seen! So Juliet is one lock short but thankfully has an open suitcase and after a dramatic day of problems (that we’re actually quite hilarious) and some beautiful views, she can finally shower. We’re off to Manly beach in the morning, very excited to see what that part of Sydney has to offer!