This is when it really starts to feel like home, when friends or family come to stay and you get to show them around Sydney.

Living out in the north west suburb of Hornsby, I didn’t really receive many visitors, but as soon as I moved to a beautiful apartment on the harbour with a swimming and awesome balcony-they started to come by! 🙂

Kate and Remi came first, from France. They timed it to be here during my school holidays in October, so we could hang out together as much as possible. And we packed a lot in! Our first day was spent at Taronga Zoo, which has great harbour views, the trip there on the ferry was pretty nice too. Remi took some great shots of the animals (and us) with the harbour backdrop. We explored several of the coastal beaches around Sydney; both eastern suburbs and northern beaches. Hard to pick a favourite, but probably preferred the northern ones.

Then we headed out of the city to the blue mountains for a couple of days, stopping enroute at featherdale wildlife park for some closer interactions with the kangaroos and koalas. We did some long hikes around Echo point (the main tourist highlight) and found a nice spot called sublime point, that looked towards the “three sisters” from the other side. The lady from the YHA was secretive about its location and revealed that “only the locals” really go there, so don’t tell her I told you about it!

We then headed up to the hunter valley for a wine tour. We went with Bradley from vinelink, who I was definately recommend, see his website www.vinelink.com.au  Bradley knows all the wineries and people, and he can customise a tour to suit your needs-I’ve now been on three tours with different sets of visitors and each was different but just as much fun!  The fact that Kate and Remi were from France and know their wines meant that we got a fabulous reception from everyone there. The evening was quite short, as the wine went to my head! The day after, when we were due to head back, was so lovely and sunny that we decided to head to the central coast and check out the beaches there. Ettalong was a hit-it was gorgeous.

We fitted in an opera, a cat empire gig and a night clubbing in Chinese Laundry all in the last weekend of their visit. It was all such fun! We also hosted a breakfast barbeque on our balcony to watch England play France in the Rugby World Cup-which split the crowd that came round.