Three beautiful days in Sydney

 After an emotional farewell at the train station in Albury on Sunday March 16 we had a hard 8 hour journey to manage.

Finally we arrived in Sydney at 8 pm and went straight to our  hostel. Everybody was stuffed up from the long but great train ride and we just had a quick dinner and then went to bed.

The next day, March 17, we started with an early breakfast at 8 am. Our  sightseeing bus left at 9 o’clock. We had a very interesting 4 hour sightseeing tour by bus through Sydney and the most interesting places like the Opera House, the Darling Harbour, the Cathedral, the suburbs and  Bondi Beach.  At Bondi Beach we had  a stop for a quick refreshing swim. Then we went up the Harbour Bridge for a walk across it and had an amazing view over the City, Circular Quay and the Opera House.

After a one hour lunch break we went on a  cruise around Sydney Harbour. That was the perfect possibility to take some good pictures and we  had  an unbelievable view on the skyline of Sydney from the sea. After we had finished our boat tour we walked to the Sydney Tower and again we  had a great and beautiful view from high above over the whole city.   Now it was time for dinner at Darling Harbour and we could see beautiful Sydney at night. When arriving at our hostel everybody was very tired from a hard, but very nice and interesting day. I think we all had a good sleep that night.

On Tuesday March 18 we drove by train to Blacktown, a small suburb of Sydney,  to visit the  Featherdale Wildlife Park there.

We saw lots of different Australian animals and I was very impressed by the diversity of animals in Australia. But my impression was that the animals there have very very small spaces to live in and some of them looked very stuffed and sad. On one of the pictures you can see a crocodile and its pool which is  smaller than the crocodile itself.

Back in Sydney we drove by train over the Harbour Bridge  to see the city from a different perspective and  on the way back to Circular Quay we took the bus. There we jumped onto a ferry which took us to Manly, a suburb of Sydney with a very nice long beach. Some of us had a quick swim and after that we all went shopping in the countless Surf and Skate shops there. Then we made our way back to the hostel to get changed for a nice dinner in Chinatown. It was funny because when you enter Chinatown there are like 20 restaurants, one after the other and every restaurant is trying  to entice you to come in.  Mrs Kreplin  finally found a cheap and good one.

Once everybody had finished eating  we went down to Circular Quay again to see the illumitated Opera House, the Harbour Bridge and Sydney’s skyline at night.

It was an awesome view. Tired but happy we arrived at the hostel again at about 11 pm and fell asleep right away.

On Wednesday March 19 - the last day of our Sydney trip - we walked to the Sydney Sea Life at Darling Harbour. It was really interesting  and we got to see some big and impressive fish like a shovel nose shark, big stingrays, lots of different sharks, two lettuce eating dugongs, Barramundi and all sorts of colourful fish which live in and around Australia. (Dugongs are very rare, we call them 'Seekuh').

Later we all took the bus to Sydney's International Airport and  the short term group with Mrs Kreplin and Mr Kramer  took their plane back to Germany. Nico and Mia went for a vacation with their host family directly from Sydney and I flew back to Albury to be picked up by my family.

Now  I have  only a few more weeks left from a great and unbelievable experience which I will never forget in my life. Till soon…..

Jonas Gaier