Sydney again

We arrived back in to Sydney about 3-ish on Thursday and, thanks to a last minute hotel website, got a superb deal on a two bedroomed suite right in the middle of Sydney (Kent and Bathurst for those that know Sydney at all - and yes Mum, not as good as yours).

Went and saw Mission Impossible 3 which is worth seeing but nothing brilliant.

On Friday we used up our ticket to go up Sydney Tower. It's 305m tall which makes it the tallest building on the Sydney skyline. The first part of the experience is something called Oztrek. This is a virtual exploration of Australia. First you go into these mini-theatres that use holograms to display the four parts of Australian life: City, Beach, Outback and Rainforest. They were pretty entertaining although I did have to defend my headphones from the couple next to me who didn't realise that the headphones to the left. In a good example of male chauvinism, the bloke got the headphones that was meant to be for his wife and she just watched, whcih must have been quite boring.

The second part was in a large theatre with screens to the front and side of us complete with moving seats. The show took us across Australia and also back in time to the settlement of Australia. It didn't really teach you anything but they managed to shake us up a bit.

We then went up the observation deck. Unfortunately the view was hazy and so we couldn't see the Blue Mountains or even as far as Olympic Park but we could see Manly, Bondi, the SCG and the Harbour Bridge amongst others. The Opera House was partially visible through buildings.

Next stop for me was the Hyde Park Barracks. These were designed by a Bristol architect transported for Forgery, who designed many of Sydney's early buildings. He got a pardon upon completing the barracks. For the first thirty years of the Barracks existence it was a convict barracks for convicts serving in road gangs, for the next forty years it was home to single women who arrived in Sydney from the UK on assisted passage to even the male/female balance in the colony and were to go on and serve as domestic help.

Most of the rooms were filled with various exhibits that had been recovered from the building when they performed an archaelogical dig. The top floor was reserved for rooms set aside to be as they were during convict times all strung up with hammocks. There was an eerie presence to the place until 20 Japanese tourists turned up clicking photos and talking incredibly loudly. Thankfully I managed to get some time up there before they arrived to search through the archives for Burleys (bizarrely no Roberts) and found three who, in some freaky coincidence were all called Thomas. I promise they were different ones!!

Caela was arriving from Melbourne in the evening and so we picked up a rental car and decided to head to the coast to save time. We ended up at Maroubra which is the suberb south of Coogee, where John lives in a pub playing pool for ages. Dave lost the lot just for the record. And I 8-balled John (pretty much the only time i beat him) but we spared him running round the table with his trousers on his head.

We had a slow start to Saturday but eventually headed to Bondi. The beach was very empty which was good. It was a lot smaller than expected and there was hardly any surf. We stayed for a few hours and I even managed to persuade Dave to go into the water despite John telling him about all the sharks. A lot smoother swim that at Mooloolaba thankfully!

We had dinner at Coogee in this really cool pub overlooking the water. Filled with female hockey players too which was a bonus. Dave and I then headed back to the apartment and got ready to head out to Olympic Park to watch some more Rugby League.

The trip to Olympic Park was very eventful but we managed it. We had to drive out through some heavy traffic to a place called Lidcombe and then catch a train to Olympic Park. Annoyingly I had a panic attack on the train that I hadn't locked the car (not helped by Dave saying he couldn't remember the lights flashing) which then proceeded to stick in my mind most of the evening. Naturally when we got back the car was still there and, of course, locked.

ALERT: RUGBY LEAGUE WARNING

The Olympic Stadium is an impressive venue and we got in just in time for the second half of the warm-up match between Souths and Western Magpies. The Magpies scored two tries while we were watching but still lost 18-16.

We then went to buy ourselves Souths scarves - we were going to be Melbourne fans but you couldn't buy Melbourne scarves and we did feel sorry for Souths.

The atmosphere was pretty good considering there was a crowd of 8,000 in an 80,000 capacity stadium and "The Warren" (Bunnies - gettit?) were in good voice.

The game started at a fair old pace and Souths blew a try in the first ten minutes when Luke MacDougal lost the ball whilst diving for the try and Melbourne made them pay by taking an 8-0 lead before Souths scored a try to make it 8-6 at half-time.

Melbourne then scored two almost identical tries through Inglis and Crocker from Scott Hill kicks to make it 20-6. Dave missed the second one cos he had gone to the toilet. Sound familiar Dad?

We then had a good old punch up which resulted in Crocker getting binned when all he (appeared) to be doing was holding players back. Refs eh?

Souths took advantage with two unconverted tries to make it 20-14 but Melbourne blew them away in the last 15 to make it 38-14.

ALL THOSE NON-FOOTY FANS CAN LOOK BACK NOW

Got back to the car to find it still there and then headed back to Maroubra to collect John/Caela/Pizza (not necesarily in order of importance) and got back to the apartment to find out Watford beat Palace 3-0 in the opening play-off game!!!!

Sunday was just packing and then heading to the airport and on to Melbourne......