Royal National Park

Saturday was a good day of outdoor sports! We woke up rather early to catch a train to the Roayl National Park. It took us almost an hour to get there and there were no signs to the park from the train station. So we crossed a highway (scary!) and walked on the side of it till we found a path going to the right direction. It wasn´t the right one, though, since we discovered we were trapped by a fence. After walking back to the highway we found the right path easily and followed it to the visitor centre. It was a lot of steep steps going down and some nice views, as well. We had decided to rent bikes and sticked to the plan even though the amount of bicycle paths was a lot smaller than we had assumed when looking at the map. They told us not to ride on main roads with cars because it´s too dangerous. So we did a 10 km long Lady Carrington Drive along Hacking River. We would´ve prefered doing a loop instead of riding back and forth, but we got to see some nice views anyways. Especially trees having suffered a bit during bush fires but being still alive and growing were interesting to see. It took us almost 4 hours to drive the 20 km and have several breaks for eating, taking pictures and just hanging out. Our bikes were good and confortable mountain bikes. After returning to the bike rental we had to walk aroung 3-4km back to the train station. Instead of climbing the stairs we decided to walk along a car road, which ended up being a smart decision because it started thundering. I guess it´s common here it can be thundering and lightning right above you but it´s not raining. We were both lucky and unlucky getting back to the train station. Lucky because it didn´t start raining a lot until we reached the station. Unlucky because we missed the train by 2 minutes and had to wait for half an hour for the next one. When we finally got to the train it was hard trying to stay awake.



Rainforest

Me and big trees

Since it was Silja´s last night here she wanted to buy me a nice dinner, and I decided to get us some dessert :) It was raining and when we got the Redfern (the closest train station to Geegal) and we found out there were some railway constructions going on and most trains were substituted by busses. So after taking a train to Central Station we had to take a bus to Circular Quay. We found a nice restaurant there and sat upstairs facing the harbour, overlooking the ferry station. I had a delicions meal with marinated prawns and rice! I just really enjoy eating at nice restaurants. After our main courses we wanted to get some Kogenhagen Ice Cream but the kiosk had been closed a couple of minutes before we got there. So we went to this Italian restaurant and probably drove the waiter nuts ordering the cheapest possible gelato they had. It tasted good, though, had we got to sit on a nice table outside eating it. Since the weather wasn´t that great we decided to head home and go to bed.


We had planned to go see the Dragonboat Race of Chinese New Year on Sunday morning but since we had had such a long day on Saturday we just slept in and had a lazy morning before Silja had to leave to catch her flight. I took her to Redfern. Carla and I had thought of going to see the dragonboats but we decided not to because it was raining. I went for a run instead. I found Centennial Park alright but couldn´t find my way back home :/ I guess it wasn´t too bad after all running for a bit longer. (I went running there today, too, and got lost again on my way back. But I blame the people I asked for help because they kept telling me to go the wrong way.) It felt kind of weird not having Silja here anymore. Because we had been doing so much all the time I had felt like a tourist in Sydney, as well. In a way I had this empty feeling that you have when something that you´ve been looking forward to has just ended. But at the same time I was a little tired and felt like starting to do normal things: studying, seeing my flatmates etc... So all in all I´m happy I got some major sightseeing done before the start of the semester.


Yey! I´ve finally written everything about THE tourist week :D Once I write about my first week of lectures I´ll have catched up with this blog. But now I gotta go to bed, so I´ll do it tomorrow...