Sydney

Sydney is a fantastic city. It's definitely the best place we've been to so far - apologies to Singapore, KL, Perth and Melbourne. It just has the feel of a big city, which Perth and Melbourne don't have. Apparently Melburnians like to think their city is a rival to Sydney, but they're deluding themselves. Sydney is a city on a different level to Melbourne. And it has an amazing harbour front.
We spent a few days in the city - we got to look at the Botanic Gardens in the end, where we saw a possum, some cockatoos and some bats. We went to Manly, which was so named because Captain Cook saw some particularly muscular Aboriginals when he sailed past and declared them 'manly'. It's quite close to the suburb of 'Hunky'. Pie and went for a walk around the bay there. We went to Bondi Beach, which was very busy. We went on another nice walk from there to Coogee.

And we spent two days at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Unlike the MCG, the SCG feels like a proper stadium - Matt spent the first day sitting behind a pillar, and the queues for drinks or food were huge. Most importantly, it took about 20 minutes to exit the stadium at the close of play - nobody had thought that people might actually want to attend (and leave) the stadium when they built it. I far preferred it as a ground to the MCG - it even had two pavilions.

Obviously, the highlights of Sydney are the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge - and deservedly so. We went for drinks in the bar below the Opera House and walked over the bridge. I think I'm going to come back here one day!