Back in Sydney (32468km driven)

It was both nice and sad to arrive back in Sydney after five months on the road. Nice because Sydney is my home in Australia and I love the city and sad because it's raining the whole time and I only have 2 weeks left before I fly home. Actually I am looking forward to come home to see my family and friends again, but I will miss Sydney and the rest of Australia for all it has given me.

Our first task in Sydney was to sell the car. We had exactly two weeks and we hoped that that would be enough time. The first thing we did was put the car on different add sites and print out posters to hang in different hostels and travel agents around Sydney. We had only one response the first days and that turned into nothing, so a couple of days later we decided to try and park the car along the famous car selling strip in Kings Cross. It was there me and Kristin found the car in the first place. We sat there for about five hours without anybody even looking at the car, then suddenly an English guy showed up and wanted to have a look. After he had a mechanic look at it and we discussed the price, he ended up buying it from us. We were really happy because we heard a lot of stories about people that tried to sell their car for 3-4 weeks with no luck. Finally we could take all our stuff out of the car and movie into a hostel, a welcoming change from living in the car for so long! The pictures are of our bed in the car (that we slept in for four months) and the alley we camped in. All together we drove 32.468km in the five months I owned the car!

I never went to the Chinese garden during the time I lived in Sydney so me and Annina decided to go there and check it out. The garden is located in Darling Harbor and it was easy to find. The gardens full name is the Chinese Garden of Friendship and it was built to celebrate the Chinese community in Sydney and the close relationship with Guangzhou, a city in the Guangdong Province, China. From the outside it looks fairly small, but once inside the walls you realize that it has some size. I found the Chinese garden very beautiful with a lot of Chinese art, architecture and plants making the walk through the garden diverse and fascinating. Normally I am not the biggest garden visitor, but I enjoyed it. Be sure to check out the "Sydney 4" album when I post it to see more photos from our visit.

Another thing that we said we would do but never did during my time living in Sydney was the walk between Bondi and Coogee beach. So as soon as we had a day with some blue sky we got on the bus to Coogee. The path follows the coast running in and out of small bays and over cliffs and beaches. The best known beach along the track (not counting Coogee or Bondi) is Bronte beach. The weather was great considering the rain we had the last week but the water and air temperature was still to cold for swimming. It took us about 1.5 hours to complete the walk and we enjoyed it a lot! About half way the path ran next to a huge cemetery. It was a spectacular sight to see the graves in the hillside, from the top of the hill to the cliff edge with the ocean below. Almost at the end the path rounds a sharp corner and Bondi Beach comes into full view down below the cliffs. It was beautiful.

The last thing I will write about in this blog post is the two movies we watched in the cinema. Annina wanted to watch another movie in the IMAX and I am not the person to say no to an IMAX experience, so we bought the cheap cinema vouchers on eBay again and went to watch Toy Story 3. I love 3D movies when they don't misuse the 3D effect and Toy Story 3 was a great example. I will try and get a review up on my movie blog so keep an eye out for that. :) Being a fan of Christopher Nolan (Memento, The Dark Knight) I got very excited when I realized that his newest movie Inception had just been released. And since Tuesdays are 40% off we decided to go watch that as well.

My plan is to write one more post about Australia before I fly home. My flight is on Wednesday the 4th of August at 16:40 and I arrive in Norway the 5th of August at 11:00. I will try and get all my photos and videos online before I fly home and I will also write a couple of stand alone pages with stuff I have seen and done so stay tuned for that.