Day 45 - Sydney, Australia

New Years Eve is here! Very excited about tonight. 

We check out of the hotel as we need to avoid the quadrupling of price to £400 per night for this evening and tomorrow. (crazy!). Luckily we have our buddies Nick and Rachel to stay with. They live in Bondi Beach and have been here nearly two years now. 

We need to get some admin out the way today so trawl the streets to find somewhere for brunch with decent wireless. We manage to find somewhere and get our Auckland plans sorted. Three hotels (including Goat Island) and car hire done. When did hiring a car get so expensive??

We also FaceTime our parents after sending a Happy New Year message and getting an almost immediate reply from both mothers despite it being 4am in the morning in the UK!

After we head to Nick and Rach's via train and bus. Great to see them and also meet Rach's sister Helen who is also over for Christmas and NY. They have a great little place just up the road from Bondi Beach. You can see the sea outside their front door.

We go and grab some beer and pizza as need to set off at about 6.15pm to get the boat. 

When we are ordering the pizza we are in a bit of a rush so decide to order take out from a restaurant. Nick queues up and when it's his turn asks the guy "how long does it take you to crank one out?" Needless to say the guy looks very confused and bemused. Almost as bemused as Nick's face when he realised what he had just asked. Loved it when the pizzas were ready the guy gave them to him and said "this is the fastest I have ever cranked one out".  Hilarious. 

We stock up on Soerra Nevada, Fat Yaks and wine and set of for the long walk to the harbour. The great thing is that it's walkable though and we don't need to faff about with Sydney's public transport, particularly on the way home!

What I didn't realise is that we are actually just getting a boat to a small island in the middle of the harbour called Shark Island, rather than staying on the boat. It turns out to be so much better. 

Here is where we are in relation to the opera house and the harbour bridge. Such a great spot. 

After clear blue skies all day the weather soon turned very ominous but luckily we don't see any rain and it soon passes. 

We head onto the top of the island to find our spot. The island is lovely and luckily just busy enough as they only purposefully sold about 700 tickets for the whole island which makes it the right side of busy with leaving enough space to get a great spot.  We even managed to find ourselves a picnic table. 

Fantastic views of the opera house and the harbour bridge. Was not expecting to be so close. This must be one of the best spots in Sydney to watch the show!

Starting to get dark. The atmosphere is buzzing. Particularly as we get a little taster at 9pm - the family firework show before the main event at midnight. 

For the fireworks we find a great spot on the rocks down by the water. High risk getting down there tipsy but high reward!

The iPhone camera doesn't do a great job of capturing the amazing show. Some seriously impressive fireworks. Sydney definitely does it best. 

When the fireworks pour off the bridge it looks spectacular. Like a waterfall of fire. 

The finale is amazing with fireworks shooting off the roof of the opera house for the first time. What a show. Definitely the best New Year we have had. So nice that we are sat outside drinking, watching an amazing show and it is so warm. Our first warm New Year!

After we go back to Nick and Rach's to play some games and get to bed about 4am. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! X