OZ

About ten minutes before an awesome sunset

Let me tell you about a little town called Ayrlie Beach. It's on the Eastern Coast of Australia, somewhere between Brisbane and Cairns. It's the launch point to the Whitsunday Islands National Park. It's labeled as a backpacker town, meaning it's the inexpensive option to a tourist town like Cairns, resulting in a different, more down-to-earth, laid back crowd compared to other places. There's one main drag through town, and on this street there's a couple of sweet hostels with huge open air bars, one ridiculously overpriced and tiny grocery store, a Subway (just like every other town down under), and then the rest of the street is occupied by about fifty annoying booking agencies selling all of the tourist attractions around there. The beach here is only so-so, so there is a big natural water lagoon in town that we hung out at each day. So the routine follows... go lay by the lagoon during the day, read, sleep, get a little sun, grab a sandwich for dinner and go down to the beach to watch what was probably the most beautiful sunset I've ever seen, and then go play some mean cards in one of the bars and meet people from all over the world. Not to mention, after doing this for a couple of days it was time to hop on a sailboat and spend a couple more days cruising around the Whitsunday Islands. Needless to say, I was quite reluctant to jump on a plane back to Sydney.

Duh, The Opera House

Sydney was different. The Opera House is remarkable to actually see in person, and the Harbour Bridge is huge, and there's a lot of interesting districts like The Rocks and Kings Cross. The city is super clean, with rad old buildings and nice parks and I felt like a lot of character, especially compared to Auckland. My favorite part was walking through the Botanical Gardens where there were at least a thousand bats, not exaggerating, each with a wingspan of two feet. Then my sister and I got dragged in to taking part in a street performance too. I have to say though, I was a bit turned off of the whole big city atmosphere after traveling around all these small towns in NZ. The people were too caught up on their image, walking around the city everyone was so put together it tainted it for me a bit. My last night, I planned on walking down the street from my hostel to take a picture or two, and ended up walking all the way down to the Darling Harbour. It was good to walk around the city alone and take it in when it wasn't so hectic and there weren't so many people around.

The Giant Harbour Bridge

Archibald Fountain - Hyde Park