Sunday, October 9: Bondi Breakdown

There was a party I was supposed to go to today that pretty much all of Weerona was going to, but I bailed out and asked Tamara and Amy if they wanted to go to Bondi Beach instead because it was one place I still had yet to go.

We started our journey at 930 to the train station and upon arriving we saw that the trains were closed and they had replacement buses to the city. No problem right? Yes, big annoying problem. The buses stopped at every train station up to Sydney and took surface roads all the way into the city. We then got on a train to Bondi Junction. If you take the train from Wollongong to Sydney the trip is about an hour and a half and that'll give you an idea how long this bus trip took.

 Now Tamara lives in Sydney and we were joking about her being our tour guide and she lead the way to Bondi Beach.....but lead us the wrong way for maybe 20-30 minutes? We stopped in a park and asked for directions and then had to walk up to the bus station to take a bus to the beach. It was either a 40 minute walk or walk back up to the bus station and take a short bus  ride. When we walked into the bus station there was a really long line to get on the bus and we barely made it on the bus. Halfway to the beach the bus broke down and we had to walk the rest of the way there. We didn't arrive at the beach until about 2 pm.

We got lunch at Moo which is a burger place and I got a burger with a milkshake that had Snickers, caramel, chocolate sauce, and crushed nuts.

We then walked up and down Bondi Beach, which was a better beach than I was expecting. Everyone told me that it's not that great of a beach. I thought the waves were good and it was pretty big which was nice. I can see the flip side though because it is a very touristy beach with a ton of tourists there, it's crowded, and the multitudes of surfers take all the waves.

After walking up and down the beach we walked to Tamaranda Beach and followed a nice path that also had many tourists and walkers on it.

On the edge of the beach there was a pool (that I think was filled with seawater?) so you could swim laps in or have a more controlled swim area.

Amy dared me to go to the edge of the cliff

This is Tamara and Amy. (Amy and Tamara if you are reading this you should have expected me to do something with those photos you took!) 

 After Tamaranda Beach we took a quick bus ride back to Bondi where we struggled to get on a bus and when we finally got on a bus that was going to take us back into the city it broke down! We couldn't believe it twice in one day a bus broke down! Since it was a Sunday all of the buses were full and we had to walk back a couple stops to catch another bus!

When we got into the city we took a train to central station and then took a direct bus to Wollongong Station.

As we were driving down into Wollongong I looked out the window and thought "Home." Which surprised me, but then I thought about it and it made sense. This past week I have realized I have become more comfortable here and I feel like I have been more of myself. Not that I haven't been myself, but I just feel more comfortable here. This is also the longest and farthest I have ever been from home and its nice to know that I can feel comfortable 15,000 miles away from home and call wherever I am home.

In the end we took 6 buses, 2 of which broke down, 2 trains, and 8 hours of travel time when on a normal day it would have only taken 4 for a round trip to Bondi. But in the end we all enjoyed the day and had fun on our weird little adventure