Sydney and New Years Eve

 Hello from Sydney!

 

 With the mandatory shot of the Opera and Harbour Bridge

So yeah, what has happened since last update, well, arrived at my hostel,
which by the looks and the reviews I read online seems to be the shittiest one in
whole of Sydney, but at the same time the only one where you didn't need to
book for a total of two weeks because of NYE, had to book for five nights
which was okay. The reviews said that the hostel got bedbugs, clogged toilets,
no toilet paper, shitty kitchen etc. I can confirm all except the shitty kitchen
since I never made food there. But it had one great thing, a cafe/bar in the same
building where you could buy dirt cheap breakfast, beer, food etc. Great stuff!

 A "little" bedbug fella out for a walk.

So what else? I've basically just been walking around Sydney looking at stuff I remembered from last time and also looking at new stuff of course. Libraries, cathedrals, war memorials, parks, food courts etc.

 From the State library of New South Wales, quite nice.

 They also had a small library called the Shakespeare library, which was closed the day I was there but I managed to charm my way in. Quite a nice small library with some interesting stuff, one of them is the facsimile of the first complete collection of Shakespeare's work. They got the original in storage, and apparently it was worth quite a lot!

In the library laid in the floor they have the map Captain Cook make of Australia, as can be seen the east coast here is barely charted.

After sightseeing and spending all day outside it is good to chill out and have a few drinks/beers with friends, and for this we have the splendid local "brand" I'm going to introduce you to now. This is wine, well, rather, what is to bad to be wine mixed together and cheap. 4 liters for 10 dollars? Oh and the best part, it's just called Goon. I think it says on the cartoon it can contain traces of milk and egg, and if you buy two cartoons of these they might end up tasting differently, so we are talking quality wine here!

 The famous goon, if you ever encounter someone from Australia or that have spent sometime there, they are sure to have encountered this fabulous golden liquid!

 

So this is my best photography from new years eve, and it's taken after the fireworks, still quite nice though. So why no fireworks pictures? Well, we have to go back like 11 hours in time. Me and some friends I met at the hostel went to the Botanical Gardens in Sydney and wanted to watch the fireworks from there because you can see both the bridge and the opera house. The problem is though the garden closes at 1500 so you have to be there before that, we got there 1450, and with people camping out in the gardens from the day before and people arriving all day before us we got quite bad places in the park. So, we waited nine hours to basically see the trunks and foliage of exotic trees! So yeah, if you saw the fireworks on tv, you had a much better view. I'll upload a video a bit later with the little footage I got though!

Also had Kangaroo again, here on skewers, still good!

 War memorial in Hyde Park to commemorate the fallen soldiers from the first world war and other engagements.

 The main room contained this statue, and it was quite beautiful. From the website of the Anzac Memorial the following is said:

"The sculpture ‘Sacrifice’ is the central motif of the Memorial’s design. Symbolising the spirit of courage, endurance and sacrifice, it depicts a body of a young Anzac soldier lying over a shield and sword. He is supported by three female figures and an infant, representing ‘his best beloved’ – mother, sister, wife and child. The infant also represents future generations."

The dome is decorated with  120000 stars, representing each man and woman serving overseas in the first world war.

 

The memorial at night.

 Also encountered a posom, they are quite domesticated.

 

Found a cool Knights Templar fountain pen and letter opener set. The price however was not as cool, 4500$, ouch.

 Found this dude as well, apparently under the tutelage of St.Mary, but he needed some help with is Ipad, I stepped in and helped of course. At first look, it actually looked like a tablet of some sort, but alas, it was a chalk board.

Out eating at a Malaysian restaurant with the specialty Roti which is a sweet bread, kinda tasted a bit like pancakes, here with sweet red onions in them and hot curry sauce, fish sauce and some other unknown sauce for dip.

Some of the local birds, don't know their names, we just called them "Bendy beaks" xD

So Woolloomooloo is where we stayed in Sydney, and the reason I got it here is because the name cracks me up, because it makes me think of this:

Ps. you have to be a bit of a nerd to get this.

Anyhow, that is it for now, next update will be about my stay in Melbourne with some friends and I met while interrailing in 2010! Oh yeah, I'll try and get the video from NYE up and running, but the internet down here is sketchy at best.