Where to start? We have only been here for 11 days and so much has happened! Good thing Emmi has been diligent enough to keep a diary every day so we know what happened and when! Maybe more like she knows. I updated mine using hers so I have it now and I intend to keep it every day so I won't have to write about 10 days at once. It really wasn't an easy job! This first week and a half has been so full of events that I had no idea what happened and when, so when I wrote my diary I kept asking Emmi what happened then and then, and what did we do after this and that haha! Thank god for the diligent Emmi!
We arrived in Sydney on the 29th at around 9pm after traveling for 30 looooooooong hours. Stop-overs went fine, planes were on time if not ahead of schedule so there really wasn't any hurry in either places, almost too much time. Immigration to Australia went fine, and before we knew we had our backpacks and pretty much walked into a cab to take us to the first hostel! Hostel was called Base, located on Kent Street. The ride took about half an hour and cost us 50 AUD. We checked in and dragged our already heavy backpacks to the 4th floor (because we didn't see the elevator that was right in front of us...Oh well, good exercise!). The room fit 8, all female, and surprise surprise there were 2 girls from Finland in our room! They were from Vaasa and way more swedish speaking than finnish. The hostel itself wasn't all that fun, people seemed to just hang out in their own rooms and not really socializing with other people.
Sunday morning we woke up around 10am, with little to no jetlag at all! I was stunned. Flying East is always harder (at least has always been for me) and I was waiting for a night of no sleep and extreme exhaustion the next day but none of it happened. I guess we really timed our sleeping well on the planes, a definite yay for us! So we got up and decided to take a walk to see the most famous attraction of Sydney. I am of course talking about the Opera House. I always imagined it to be huge and all gorgeous, but in a way it was kind of a dissapointment. It somehow seemed very small and I don't really know how to explain it, but it didn't quite meet my expectations. I'm in no way trying to say it's not worth the while to go see, it definitely is, I just think I expected it to be something more. After the Opera house we took a walk around the Royal Botanic Garden that is right next to the Opera House. And of course we also saw the Harbour Bridge, can't miss that one! After all that we walked around the Circular Quay and checked out some stores, but nothing found it's way home with me. Yet anyway haha!
Monday morning we checked out of Base and took direction to Bondi Beach. We didn't book the hostel until late Sunday night (with tiny bit of panicing, oops!) We hadn't gotten the confirmation email when we left so it was kind of a crazy moment because we didn't know if they were gonna take us in! Our reservation had luckily gone through and he had just sent the email to me so we got in! The hostel is called Surfside Backpackers, it's located on Hall Street right next to the beach! We literally have to walk like 200 metres and we are on the beach. I ♥ Australia.
We got into our room, left our stuff and headed right to the beach for a walk. The wind was pretty bad and it wasn't all that warm, but somehow I still managed to get a nasty tan line from my shorts....And up until now (9 days later) they are still there! Not that bad though, so I'm hoping they will be all gone sometime soon! Here's some Bondi Beach surprises that we found from the beach hahha
The hostel is so much better than the last one. Immediately when we walked in you could just see and feel the way more relaxed feeling and the people here are way more talkative and social. After a few nights you know that practically everyone here smokes, and every single night some people are drinking and partying! Party peopleeeeee!
Tuesday was dedicated to layng on the beach and trying to get a tan. I just slept and read my book while Emmi went crazy over all the surfers and lifeguards trying to spot the ones she knows from the tv show Bondi Rescue. She ran around the beach line taking pictures of random surfers, a real stalker! ;)
I had forgotten to put sun screen on my face and SURPRISEEE there was a red face looking back at me from the mirror. And I mean red! I didn't just burn my nose, it was my whole friggin face, ouch. Just to put it out there, if you forget to put sun screen on some part of your body, it will burn. Regrettingly I have to say there's more to come about that...Oh boy.
Tuesday night we spent hanging out down stairs with other people staiyng at this hostel, some girls from England gave us our first taste of the Australian magic drink, the GOON. It's just wine that comes in a box and the thing about it is it's super cheap. And also tastes disgusting so you have to mix it with something. But it's cheap and very effective on getting you drunk, so everyone drinks it.
Wednesday was also a beach day. It was yet again a windy day and at times it was so cold! I spent the day laying down while Emmi again stalked and photographed the surfers and lifeguards. I never watched the show, so I'm not all hyper and excited about spotting the ones that appear on the show, but who would really say no to checking out some hot lifeguards? That's right.
Later on wednesday I discovered that I had forgot to put sun screen on the backs of my knees (kneecaps?, polvitaipeet in finnish) and also my ass. Oh what fun it was to try to walk normally, it was painful to even move! Emmi was having a blast laughing at me trying to put clothes on and move, so at least it was fun for one of us!
Thursday was the first rainy day we had here so we decided to head to Bondi Junction to do some shopping with a finnish girl, Johanna, that we met while staying in this hostel. The mall was huge, I think it's one of the biggest if not the biggest one in all of Australia. We walked around for a couple of hours, I bought a cute dress that you will probably see in some pictures later! Clothing stores close at around 5:30pm here, which is really weird, when do people have time to shop if they work or are in school??
On Friday the weather was looking better and we headed towards Taronga Zoo to see some cute Aussie animals! We walked around for a couple of hours feeling like little kids since we got so excited about the animals! Emmi took loads of pictures.
The rest of the night we spent with Johanna and some others in the tv room watchin Jackass 3, which was sooooooo funny!! I got some really good laughs out of it hahahahahhaahha. Crazy guys.
Saturday was another beach day, yay! Later on we got back to the hostel and cooked chicken cesar salad with Johanna. Then it was time to start drinking since the plan was to go out to Kings Cross. Well, plans change haha. We hung out inside and drank with some other backpackers and at 11pm they kicked us outside because they had to close up. By that time the magid drink had done it's trick on Emmi and whoooops I got the role of the baby sitter. We sat outside for a few more hours and then headed to McDonalds and BiteBox to get some food before going to sleep.
Oh and we also booked another week at this hostel, yay! :)
On Sunday we walked along the beach street because Emmi wanted to buy a new bikini. Well, prices were sky high so no bikinis for her! We kept walking and found the Bondi Market. It's only here on Sundays, so we walked in and took a look. Or as the aussies say, we took a aptain Cook haha! They had some nice looking clothes and other stuff but for some reason I wasn't on the buying mood so I didn't get anything. Emmi got a pair of sunglasses.
We got back to the hostel and went out to the beach with Johanna, Anssi and Suzie (from Skotland). We were there for a few hours and then it started to rain so we headed back to the hostel. When the rain stopped me, Johanna and Suzie went out to Pizza Hut to get pizza, Emmi went to McDonalds since she doesn't eat pizza (seriously who doesn't eat pizza?! Weirdo). We went to the tv room to eat but the movie that was playing sucked so we headed to our room. It wasn't long until Johanna came to our door and said ''we are going out.'' And so we did. We went to Bondi Hotel that's practically right down the street. We got some drinks and sat down to play some drinking games such as Bitch and Blood Coin (verikolikko), from which the latter got some attention, obviously it's never been seen around here before!
Monday was a really slow day. Emmi woke up early and went downstairs to read since it has started to get SO HOT in our room at night/morning. I woke up, grabbed my book and went downstairs to read too. We sat outside in the backyard for a while but it was just too hot! I finished my book, now what?! It was such a good book (The Hunger Games), I need to get the sequel to it..I just haven't seen any bookstores around here, weird.
After finishing my book we went to Iga, the local grocery store to get Emmi a new shaver since hers was stolen... I noticed that someone had gone through my stuff too, zippers in my backpack were not where I had left them! Luckily nothing has been taken from me.
We also stopped by the beach but it was so rainy and cold that we came back pretty quickly. Emmi started to write her blogpost and I got bored, so I went outside for a few drinks with some fun peoples!
Tuesday morning we woke up to a super loud noise coming from the neighbours. They are doing some kind of a huge renovation on the house and decided to wake us up, oh yay. We looked out the window and the sky was blue! So a little change to the original plan of going to the Sydney Aquarium earlier in the day. We headed to the beach, stayed out until about 3pm and then after that caught the bus to take us to the Aquarium. We got off the bus and the sky was looking like it was gonna start raining any second. And sure enough the sky exploded on us way before we reached the destination of the day. Thank God there are plenty of canopies in the city centre. The water was literally coming horizontally.
We stood under the canopy for like 20minutes waiting for the rain to ease up a little so we could move. We weren't that far from the place we thought we were gonna get into the Aquarium. Little did we know it wasn't exactly there. Stupid misleading maps and directions. The rain stopped and we started walking again. It tooks us like 15 minutes to actually find the Aquarium that was supposed to be so visible from everywhere, yeah right! Well anyways, we found it and there was a nice person behind the ticket desk and he let us in as students, so it was cheaper, yay! :)
So we strolled around and saw all the nice fishes and some awesome sharks! Emmi was going peanuts over the sharks, sharklover. By the time we were done it was raining again. So we sat inside the Aquarium for about 10 minutes and then left. We were starving, so on the way back to the bus stop we stopped at a grocery store and got some food.
Today (Wednesday), it was all cloudy again so we headed to Bondi Junction, because I really needed to find a book store. I wanted the sequel to my Hunger Games book, and after looking for a bookstore for a while we found it! And all the better they had the books yay. I ended up getting both of the books I didn't have from the trilogy, so now I'll have something exciting to read for a while. I'm excitedddd yay!
After I got my books the mission was to find some loose comfortable tops and a long sleeve loose shirt to through over them when it gets a little colder. I found some tops but no long sleeve shirt, so mission partly completed!
We got back from the junction, ate and now we're just hanging around the hostel. Our reservation in this hostel ends on monday the 14th, but I think we might end up staying for a 3rd week hahah! We love it here, and there's awesome people here, so why not? In the Sydney area we still want to check out Manly beach and go to the Blue Mountains. We're also supposed to meet up with Emmi's sisters friend Jenny, who is also in Sydney. And my american aunt Robin told me she has a friend living here so I might be meeting up with her too!
Finally I got yall updated, you're welcome :):) Everything is going great in this part of the world, and we will be looking for some farm work around the Melbourne area soon, so that's where we will be heading next!
One more funny thing about Australia that I just have to share with you guys haha. Probably many of you have seen the Star Wars movies, or at least little pieces of them. Well, in the movies there's the star troopers, the guys in the white suits, and they have the guns that make the funny TSUP noise when they fire right? In here when the pedestrian light turns green, it makes a sound just like that! Hahahah. It's just a funny thing we keep talking about when we're waiting for the light to turn green. It always makes me think of Star Wars!
More pictures HERE, and we also made a youtube channel where you will hopefully be seeing some behind the scenes material ;) click HERE for that.
All pictures by Emmi Hartikainen
