Goodbye Cairns, Hello Sydney

Today was a very depressing, but exciting day. When I woke up this morning I realized that many of the friends, and what I have considered to be my family for the past three weeks, had gone back to the states. On top of some leaving I also came to the realization that I would be leaving some of my closest friends in Cairns for a few more days. One of my favorite boys on the trip, Mark, left Macy and I a note under our door before he left, and we both almost cried while we were packing up our things to check out of the hotel. Once we checked out and stored our luggage we made our way down to breakfast and to the pier to walk around one last time in the gorgeous warm weather. Luckily, since it was Saturday there was a small market set up and a live band playing so we had plenty of entertainment for our last few hours in the sunshine. 

After a little bit of last minute shopping and some lunch we made our way back to the hotel to collect our belongings and head off to the airport. This was the final goodbye to Katie and Chelsey, which was VERY sad, but I was excited for the next journey of my trip. 

By the time we got to the airport we had just enough time to relax for five minutes, and then it was off on the gateway. To my surprise our flight was very nice including individual TV’s in the back of the seat. I was able to watch Mirror Mirror for the first time and it was a precious movie. No sooner than when my movie ended we were preparing for landing, so I opened the window shade and stared at all of the city lights. Unfortunately, Sydney is only in the 60's so it was back to the cold weather. Once we collected everyone in our group from the terminals we found a shuttle to take us to our hostel. I will say it's definitely not a five star hotel, but I have a warm place to sleep and shower so I am perfectly content. AND to be honest it might actually be better than the AIS in Canberra... other than the food. Once everybody got squared away we began our walk around the city. We made our first stop for dinner and then continued on to Darling Harbor. This Harbor is not the same one as the Opera House, but it is still very pretty at night, and lucky for us every Saturday night they have a fireworks show, so we got to see fireworks before the fourth!! Once we made our trip around the entire Harbor we began our slow walk back to our hostel for the night. Although I am already in love with Sydney, yes I will admit it, I am almost ready to come home.