Sydney

When you live in UK there are 2 things that you come to realise about Australia.

It is the place that everybody wants to visit or live at some point in his life and secondly, you have to make fun of the Australians.

I do not know if British people are still bitter for choosing the wrong country to live and the better one to ship all the criminals (without consulting the weatherman first) but I can image the smile on those convicts’ faces when they arrived here.

Sydney is so different from London but still the closest you can get to a British culture in any of the colonies.

It feels as if you got British people to build a city that does not have all the annoying things from back home.

For example, if you ask someone to briefly describe a typical town in the UK, he would probably say:

Depressing weather, old looking houses, pubs close at 11, everybody is mad about football.

Change those with sunny weather, modern buildings, late drinking and everybody mad about surfing and you have got Sydney.

We arrived in the afternoon of Christmas-Eve in a cloudy but very hot weather. Jen & Craig (our friends from UK who are living here now) were waiting for us at the airport.

It has been a long time since someone was waiting for us at the airport, and it feels good to know that you will not get ripped off by the taxi driver for the ride to the city.

This is our second stop that we did not have anything planned. This time because J&C had taken care of everything. Accommodation, sightseeing, Christmas & New Year celebration, it is like having your personal travel agent.

We did not do much the first evening, apart from a quick tour on the beach side and an introduction to the most annoying thing in Australia… The flies

At any given time, there are about 20 flies on average for each person who is outdoors. All of them are constantly flying around your head and trying to get into your ear.

The next day against all the odds, the sun came out. Whoever put that curse on us (and if you are reading this message, I think I know who you are) it doesn’t work anymore.

It was so hot that had no option but to go to the beach (wish we had some rain to cool down…)

In Greece, when you go to the beach, you lie down until you get too hot, then you go into the sea until you get bored and then you come out and lie down again. You repeat that until you get sun burned.

Here they do things differently. The main thing is surfing. All kinds of surf variations, these people live for water sports.

Tomorrow is Christmas and we are going to a friend’s flat for dinner. BBQ in sunny December!!!
This southern hemisphere is crazy but I like it...