Sunny in Sydney

Our arrival in Sydney was memorable! Åslaug who truly is an excellent driver does not really have much experience with driving in big cities. And with a not so great Sydney map or any real idea of where we where, the time drving in the city was a more tense and stressed one than during the rest of our trip. We did find it straight away thanks to luck and great intuition (female if I must say so myself.. sorry Paul) and Åssi handled it with impressive skills. A week in Sydney went by quickly and I'm suprised at how much I liked it. I imagined Sydney to be a very big city but the city centre is small (you can walk everywhere), charming (so many beatiful places two go) and diverse (you get everything from the beach to the fancy opera house to the red light district in a very small area). Our stay started very diffrently from how it ended. The two first nights we stayed by the central station and we went clubbing, had the free city tour and went to a show in the Opera House (how cool is it to be able to say that!). We saw a comedien called Nina Conti who is one of the best people in the world to speak out loud without moving her mouth. So funny we were rolling of our chairs!

Nina Conti Poster in Sydney! Awesome!

Saying goodbye to Potter, listening to our roadtrip music one last time on the stereo (thanks again Paul for all the great music)

Then we moved to Kings Cross because the hostel rates are a lot cheaper than city central. Kings Cross is the red light district and the view from our hostel was 2 strip clubs, McDonalds, liqour shops and "Pleasure Den: everything adult". Kings Cross was quite the experience but with the police regularily controlling the streets and so many people out it felt safe enough even friday night out alone.

Autumn being a lot more noticible in Sydney than anywhere else we were in the Oz, our visit to Bondi (pronounced Bondai) and Manly was not for the beach sake itself, but it was beautiful to see even on a rainy day. We also saw the lovely botanical gardens and had an evening in the rotating tower where we watched the sunset over the skyscrapers. Wow!

 Paul in front of the Harbour bridge, the Opera house is litteraly right behind us.

Sydney by night

Two days before we left we said goodbye to Paul who was off to Bali and Asia for 3 months, and so we broke up team Potter. We had ten final rounds of the card game President and Bitch (Boms og president) and wrote the outcome on our arms in indian henna (the kind that stays for weeks). Sanna: President, Paul: Swiss and Åssi; Bitch. The game will continue when Team Potter reunites sometime, somewhere in Europe.

Our last coffee together as "TEAM POTTER"

The last day we had in Sydney we visited the Norwegian seamanschurch in Manly beach where we enjoyed waffles and bought chocolate (firkløver) and Riceporride (risengrynsgrøt, that we later made on our arrivel in NZ). Friday the 6th of May was a big promotion of the movie "Water for Elefants" and there was a big red carpet thing going on in the middle of town. We were there and waited for 1h30min before we saw Rob Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon walk by. It was mostly noticed by the crowds screaming at the top of their voices. The celebraty sight wasnt that impressive but if was fun seeing the fuss around it!

 Assi at the Norwegian Shop with the norwegian food at the Norwegian seamanschurch! (Thats a lot of Norway:)

Water for Elephants, Red carpet Promotion!

Botton line is, Sydney is the kind of place i could study or live for a while. The city centre and atmosphere appealed to me in a way I really didnt expect and its well worth a visit from anybody! (next blog preview; we love NZ!)