Saturday 21st July 2007

We were woken up this morning by some lunatic banging on our bedroom door. Poor Nikki almost hit the ceiling and was convinced that we had slept in and it was the hostels way of throwing us out. When i'd calmed her down, (it was someone banging on the wrong door), we got ready, had some breakfast and checked ourselves out. We walked up to the Kings Cross station and caught the train into the centre, where we walked to the Bus Station.

Our bus to Newcastle wasn't booked until 1pm and we had a few hours to kill, so we went into a little café and had a drink whilst we sat reading Nikki's 'Lonely Planet' guide to find out what there was for us to do. After a short while we were boarding the bus and were on our way North.

Not far out of Sydney and there was some nice scenery, the sun was shining really brightly onto the surrounding lakes - it reminded us of New Zealand. After about 3 hours we arrived in Newcastle. The first thing for us to do was to find somewhere to stay tonight, and as we were leaving the bus station we saw a mini-bus advertising a hostel called Backpackers Newcastle, so we made enquiries and then jumped in.

When we first got to our hostel we were a little wary - the place looked really strange and there were some odd looking people walking around. We dumped our bags in our room (we're in a four-bed dorm, but luckily the other two beds are empty) and headed out to a small area called Hamilton for something to eat. We had a wander around the shops, had a kebab each and then came back.

We went into the TV room and it was full of the people we'd seen earlier. They were all really nice - but some were crazy! We watched the All Blacks vs Australia rugby game on TV and two of the crazier people had a bet on (one was from New Zealand and the other Australia): which ever team lost - that person had to jump into the swimming pool. The crazy Ozy fool did it too! Nikki also got chatting to a guy from Southampton - who supported Bristol Rovers... prat!

We thought traveling was mad - but not as mad as some of the people we've met here!