Time is going so fast. I can’t believe it’s already Saturday! Friday rolled around and it was the day to pick up the rental car. Now, it’s always confusing with rental cars as they’re either in or outside of an airport. If we got the train into the airport, we’d all have to pay $13 station fee, so we caught the bus to the nearest stop and walked to firefly rental. What a palaver that turned out to be! We got off somewhere and had to locate Ross Smith Avenue. Well, we ended up walking along the highway, not on a pavement, in the hot heat and the roads probably weren’t the best to be walking in with Mum’s toe. Whoops.

We basically followed one road and then roadworks jumped out at us. Instead of waving us back as we entered the roadworks, the muppet manning the stop/go sign waited until we were right by him, to tell us to turn round and head up the walkway. That in itself proved far less safe than walking through the roadwork site! Thankfully it was only about ten more minutes until we reached the car rental. In a matter of minutes we had our car and were ready to go.

First of all though, we had to sort out a problem.This absolute beast, was actually found in my brothers bedroom at the Airbnb, but, when we opened the boot of the rental car to put our bags in, there was one of these MONSTERS crawling around! We all jumped back except Mum who flicked it out with her sunglasses. Uuuurgh even thinking about it makes me shiver. Yes, yes I know, I’ve come to a country, full of spiders and all others sorts of creepy crawlers. Doesn’t mean I have to like them! Anyway, bags in the boot and we were ready to go. Where? Canberra for the Rugby League World Cup.

We stopped a few times en route to find food, toilets and coffee. Now, our car is allegedly a 7 seater. Mum needed the most room for her toe so we put her in the boot to begin with. There was no room in the boot. I ended up in there for the three hour journey and this is what I had.I mean seriously, there was no room at all, unless you’re a hobbit but crikey, I felt like a contortionist. I couldn’t put my knees down in the gap, nor could I sit sideways comfortably. Clearly the back two seats are meant for children and not adults. It was ridiculous. Not only was it insanely uncomfortable, but I couldn’t hear anything from the front seat, nor the music! Still, the journey went quickly with games such as I-spy and spot the kangaroo.

Parking for the event was only $7, but had we parked a fraction of a second earlier we probably could have gotten away without paying as there were no Marshall’s or anything until 5pm. With time to spare, we set off on the long way round to the stadium through the Australia institution of sport campus.The streets were names after famous Australian athletes and we found ourselves strolling round without a clue where we were going. Eventually we stumbled upon the entrance.We has about thirty minutes to kill before the gates opened, so after collecting our souvenir tickets, we sat in the sun for a bit before getting frisked and heading in. The stadium was smaller than we thought and it’s certainly not the biggest in Australia, that privilege belongs to Brisbane, which is where the final of the Rugby League World Cup will be held. There was a merchandise stand, an ice cream van and a few other stalls located outside, so I picked up a programme and we headed inside to enjoy the last of the evening sun whilst watching the players warm up.Drinks in hand we were ready for the game to begin as the stands began to fill up. The ‘welcome to country’ was performed by a man named Joe playing a didgeridoo, followed by the national anthems of both teams then the first kick started the game.When we were looking at the tickets for this game we didn’t realise it was Rugby League and not Rugby Union as we’re normally used to watching. However, this game seemed a lot more fast paced with tries coming thick and fast from Australia in the second half. Half time called for a hotdog and wine and despite the fact I joined the queue with ten minutes of the first half to go, it was still five minutes into the second half by the time I sat back down.The queues were insane at each bar. No sooner had we sat back down the tries came one after the other from Australia. France didn’t really have a look in except for the one they scored of the back of a fumbled tackle and had the pitch clear to run. It was a good game to watch and as mentioned, seemed a lot more fast paced than Rugby Union. Me? I was happy watching the men tackle each other, falling into heaps on the floor and at one point we even got treated to a naked bum!We started to make our exit just before the end to avoid gridlock in the car park. Australia had cemented their win 52-6. All that was left was the three hour journey back to our beds, with an arrival time of 1am.

The weather in Sydney sure as hell hadn’t turned out to be as we expected, not by a long shot. Saturday was raining pretty heavily most of the day and when you google ‘what to do in Sydney on a rainy day,’ not a huge amount comes up. That said, we headed out to Bondi, to look at ‘tat’ shops and maybe do the Bondi to Coogee walk, as just for five minutes the rain let up.The rain really didn’t let up for long enough and as we trudged back to the car, we were utterly soaked. My back was hurting from day two in the boot so I took it upon myself to climb over the small gap above the backseat chairs and managed to get myself stuck in the footwell by Claire. Probably not my most elegant moment that’s for sure. It must have looked like free willy jumping the rock!!Sadly there were still no bondi lifeguards out again for us to gawk at. I’m hoping by the time we leave we’d have seen them once! Still. We should have probably done the aquarium Saturday too, but instead, we filled our afternoon with a good ol’ fashioned game of hide and seek. I mean it would have been rude not to in this huge house!We found some good hiding places and admittedly it did keep us entertained for a good few hours! What followed, was a storm, then card games.UNO proved a good and fun way to decide who was making breakfast and who was making dinner for the following day! It was a close call at times, but thankfully I didn’t have to do either…

Until next time…