Sydney Part Deux

We are three days into our trip and it's been awesome. Who would have ever thought that I would be in Australia with my mom? I have wanted to come here since I was a kid and actually being here is such a great feeling. It is everything that I could have ever imagined and I get to experience it with my mom. It'll be something that I will never ever forget.

Sydney is such a fabulous city. At mom's request, we are making the walk to the the harbor a daily routine so we can get our exercise. It is actually quite a hike and takes about an hour to get down there, but it's a good walk and it gives us a chance to really get through the city. Yesterday we went to the botanical gardens that are near the opera house and walked around for quite a while. We were walking through this one rainforest part and Mom exclaims, "Oh wow listen to all the birds singing!" As we come around the path we look up into the trees and we realize that they are not birds singing but incredibly HUGE bats. Like, "I vant to suck your blood" vampire bats. Now I'm not sure if they were vampire bats but one of their wings was at least the length of my arm. These things could have picked up a small child and carried it away. Mom totally freaks out and is like OH-MY-GOD! OH-MY-GOD! Then she quickly walked away for fear that one was going to get tangled up in her hair. Afterwards we took the ferry to Manly Beach for the day. Manly is such a great beach. It's pretty packed, but nothing like the beaches at the deeerty Jers or Delaware. It's pretty cool place and reminds me a little of Santa Monica Beach.

I met up with Sophie last night and my German friend Michael who we were in NZ with. I had no idea that he was going to be here, so it's very cool to see him again. We ended up going to his hostel beforehand and playing king's cup before we went out. I've played kings cup many times on this trip but this time was definitely a new experience. All of Michael's friends are German and they all spoke German and wouldn't really speak English. So Sophie and I just sat there and giggled like school girls the entire time and I kept saying things like nein and weinerschnitzel which, for some reason, they thought was absolutely hilarious. We went out into the city with all the Germans and ended up walking around for an hour trying to find a bar that everyone wanted to go to. At one point Michael goes into McDonalds and we're like ok, so apparently Michael is hungry... not really though. He goes into McDonalds, waits in line, gets up to the register and the girl goes "What can I get you?" And he says, "No I don't want to order food, can you tell me a good bar that I can go to around here?" Only Michael! We finally go back to the stupid backpacker bar that we were going to go into to start with. We wait in line only to get up to the ID checker and have her tell me that we can't get in because we have flipflops on. Sophie and I look at each other and I'm like, dude you have got to be kidding, this is a backpacker bar, who actually owns anything other than flipflops? We turn around and tell the German girls that we all can't get in because we all have flipflops on. They look at us, look at each other, start speaking German then they dig into their purses and they all whip out high heels. Each one of them had a pair. Seriously, who backpacks with highheels? My backpack is so heavy right now, it feels like I have a dead body packed in there. Anyway, so Sophie and I leave and end up at this Irish bar down the street and we meet some locals and hung out with them for the night. They asked me to come back to their house after the bar closed, so I jumped into the cab with them and spent the night at Bondi Beach! I got in this morning and mom is all... well well well it's nice that you got home safe and sound! The best thing about coming home to the hostel in the morning is that I don't have to get out of my car still in my Saturday night oufit, run to my house from my parking space, and wave to all the neighbors who think that I just got an early start on the day...

Retirement Community Neighbor: "Good morning Lauren, you're up early today!"
Me: "Ummm yeah I decided to get a head start on the day in these clothes and I thought that I would go for that matted hair and smudged makeup look *gulp*