Sydney to Newcastle

Sydney has been incredible. It’s such a cool vibrant place but very expensive. 

After my chilled day at the beach, I decided to head to Taronga Zoo. A few people recommended it to me, they said the views were awesome. 

A short ferry ride and I was there. I was quite disappointed to hear the cable cart wasn’t running but just walking around the zoo, I managed to get to the top for the view. 

I’m not really a big fan of zoos. It’s not natural to keep animals enclosed. Plus, through my travels I’ve seen some incredible animals in the wild. I’ve seen the  elephants in South Africa and the penguins and sea lions in The Galápagos Islands. 

I thought I’d spend the whole day there but it only took 2.5 hours to see everything. I was excited to see native animals however the skippies were sleeping (which I totally get as it was so hot) and there was literally one koala. 

After the zoo, I headed back to Manly. I loved it there before so I went for some lunch, shopping and the coastal walk. I walked to Cabbage Island which was gorgeous. 

The next day I’d booked a Hunters Valley wine tasting tour. I booked it via Groupon and saved a heap of money. Pick up was early but it was worth it. 

Traffic heading out was so busy. It took nearly four hours to reach our first stop which was a vodka distillery. Trying all the different flavours at 11am was interesting. They also made liqueurs so I bought a passion fruit flavour- yum. 

We had a lovely lunch included and two vineyard tours/wine tasting. I think we tried maybe 15 different wines. 

My favourite place was the last where there were two gorgeous dogs who I got to pet. I also bought two great bottles of wine. 

I learnt that Hunter Valley can’t grow Sauvignon grapes as it’s too hot. The Hunter Valley region is famous for it Semillon and Shiraz. Both very good wines. 

As you can imagine, I was pretty smashed by the end of the tour so I was tucked up in bed by 8:30pm. 

Feeling refreshed the next day after my 12 hours sleep, I headed back to the Botanical gardens for another jog. It was so nice and I always feel so good after exercising. 

I left Sydney and got the train to Newcastle. It was a three hour journey and cost $5. So cheap! Unfortunately there was a really creepy man on the train who insisted on staring at me most of the journey. I felt so uncomfortable but my luggage was such a pain to move, I just turned the other way. He pulled out a bottle of red wine and necked it like it was water (like someone else I know...).

I had one night in Newcastle to meet up with my crazy friends I met in Ibiza. It was so cool catching up with Chloe and Jess (or Helga and Jesus as they’re also known as). They’re awesome girls but my liver could only take one night with them. 

We had drinks on the balcony of my hotel. Then we had a quick drink in the hotel bar before roaming the streets of Newcastle to find out where was open. We had to do the usual shopping trolley push, running after Jess as she was more drunk and Chloe giving Jess a piggy back, all this before we’d even technically gone out!

We went to this first bar/club where the music was pretty good. We were dancing away and Jess was doing an awesome dance routine (included falling up steps) then the bouncer came over and asked her to leave. I’ve never been chucked out a club before so that was a first lol

We headed to another place which again had pretty good music but such a mix of people. We were chatting to a cool group of guys and girls who work at the mines. One guy was showing me pictures of the 80 ton digger they just built- so impressive. 

I’m at that age now that I know my limits. I switched to soda and lime early so by the time it got to 2am, I just wanted my bed. I got a taxi back to the hotel and hit the sack. 

I was up and feeling fresh as a daisy so I was completely hyped for my hike. Chloe showed me pictures of gorgeous Mount Tomaree so we decided to walk up to the view point. 

The hike wasn’t too far but it was so hard in the heat. After walking down we were going to go for a swim but there were so many dead prawns and octopus along the shore line so decided against it. 

Now I’m at the airport waiting for my flight to Brisbane. It’s only been a few weeks since I saw Vicki in Dubai but I’m super excited to see her again and hang out on her tuff. Also beyond excited to meet her fur baby Beagle called Toby.