Continuing the common theme of my trip, there was just not enough time to see and do everything! Unfortunately I only had three nights in Sydney so we had to make the best of it. Austin lives in Collaroy which is about a 45 minute drive north of the city center. When I got in we went to check out the beaches near his place and he showed me around town. Right now its winter in Australia so I wasn’t necessarily dressed for the occasion, seeing that I just spent more than a month in Southeast Asia. When I say winter, don’t get confused with a northeast winter back in the states… It was about 50 degrees here at the coldest point of the night and even got up to 70 during the day.
On Saturday we took a ferry over to Circular Quay and spent the rest of the day and night in the city. Of course I had to take the obligatory pictures in front of the Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge. We grabbed some dinner and drinks at the Opera Bar and spent the rest of the night bar hopping around downtown.
On Sunday we took one last drive through Ku-ring-gai National Park with hopes of seeing a kangaroo or a koala but no luck there. To offset the disappointment we got to the end of the trail to see some unbelievable views of the harbour.
Unfortunately (for the time being) my trip abroad is coming to a close. When the topic of world travel or backpacking comes up, you’ll always hear people say the same thing. “Do it while you’re young and do it before it’s too late!” I couldn’t agree more. Now, with that being said, traveling across the world isn’t for everyone. You have to be okay with the fact that you may be in hot weather having cold showers, taking sleepless trips across countries on overnight busses, sticking out as a prime target for pickpocketers, at the risk of eating something that doesn’t get along with your digestive system and many other not so fun situations. But on the other hand, there are no words to truly describe the life changing experience of immersing yourself in a new culture and meeting people from all over the world.
Living in America is a great privilege and I’m definitely thankful for that! There is so much to do and so many cool places to go. But unfortunately at the same time I think that people become content with what they have at home and in return they don’t take the opportunity to go outside their comfort zone and experience something new. I highly recommend a backpacking trip outside the country. As cliche as it sounds, you only live once so might as well spend the time checking out this crazy world we live in.
There are plenty of things that I’ll miss from being abroad, a few of them being the low cost of living, out of this world food, opportunity to meet interesting people every single day and the ability to barter and negotiate the price of literally everything (so much fun). Although I wish I could stay longer, there are also plenty of things that I am looking forward to getting back to… warm showers, phone service and reliable wifi, newspapers I can read, the metric system, drivers that actually use lanes, and of course my family, friends and dog!
I appreciate everyone that’s kept up with my blog and hope it was at least a little bit entertaining or informative for you! The past five weeks have been some of the best times of my life and I couldn’t be more thankful for a trip like that. I encourage anyone that wants to hear more about the trip to shoot me a text or a call one day, I’d be more than happy to share. Now it’s back to the states to get ready for the next adventure of my life.
