Feeling on cloud 9 (literally) after our skydive, a successful tyre change and the crappy weather subsiding after we reached Sydney, we arrived back at our Airbnb to watch the videos of our skydive. They were so funny! I will upload them one day. The sheer look of terror on my face vs the cool calm collected look on Nathan’s is quite comical.
We then used our opal cards to take the train in to Sydney to locate the post office where we were meant to pick up Nathan’s chrome cast that had been mailed from Brisbane as we stupidly left it plugged into the TV. It hadn’t arrived. Still, we loved Sydney so we spent the next few hours wandering back round our favourite parts. Starting with Darling Harbour.
We headed to Hard Rock Cafe to use our last voucher of buy one get one free burgers. Neither of us were particularly hungry though so we just sat and had a drink as it was happy hour! I mean it would have been rude not to!
The whole of Darling Harbour felt Christmassy. I was snapping away with Nathan saying “you’ve already taken photos of this place!” Well yes, but it’s the last time I was going to see it! From here we walked round to Circular Quay as the sun did begin to set slowly.
I will certainly miss these views! Despite seeing them several times over the course of two months out here in Australia, they never grew tiresome. I absolutely have fallen in love with Sydney!
As it got dark we headed to Martins Place where the big Christmas tree was situated. It had several messages of “Merry Christmas” personalised going round the ‘tinsel’ that people could text in to appear on the tree. The lights and the ‘tinsel’ flashed in many different colours. It was definitely beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!
On the floor there were also projections ranging from a pond to Christmas presents to an advent calendar. It was so cool! Sydney lit up for Christmas was magical! 
The whole street was lit up with a keyboard player playing Christmas songs in front of the fountain. It was beautiful. From Martins Place we ventured in the direction of St Mary’s Cathedral, stopping by the Hermes store to admire their magnificent Christmas windows. 
In one of the windows, the one with the house, was a camera that filmed you looking in the window and then the video was playing in one of the others! They were definitely the best Christmas windows we had seen out of all the shops!
There was a man sat outside Hermes playing beer bottles to the tune of jingle bells! Next up was the light show at St Mary’s Cathedral.
The area in front of the Cathedral was FULL of people sitting down listening to the carollers singing traditional Christmas songs! Most of them were from church youth clubs then there were guest speakers who took to the steps before it was totally dark and the light show commenced!
The whole Cathedral lit up with bright colours and words such as Peace, Joy and Love.
It was beautiful with many different colours. It was done in three parts with the first part being the colours. 
The next part was a story but I can’t quite recall what it was about. Whoops!
Everything was perfectly projected into the Cathedral and it was truly stunning! So bright and vibrant against the dark night sky!
I was now truly starting to feel festive. Finally. We stayed for the first two parts of the light show and then left when it got to the nativity story. 
It finished with “Happy Christmas From Sydney.” It was amazing! I wonder if the lights on Sydney Opera House were the same for Christmas as they were for the rest of the year? We made our way back on the train to Homebush after a wonderful last night in this beautiful city. 
Our last and final day of our eight month adventure had come around far too quick for my liking. The sun was shining and it was a glorious day. We used our opal cards again to get us into Sydney where we actually did visit Hard Rock Cafe to eat our last meal. We had one more look round the shops before heading back to the Airbnb to relax by the pool for our final few hours. 
Satisfied we had managed to catch as much sun as the weather would allow us to, we put the key back in the letterbox and went on our way to drop the car back. Good job we suddenly thought to check the traffic as it pretty much took us two hours to get to the rental car place and we still were two minutes late. Thankfully they didn’t mind. We loaded our bags into the shuttle who had a very grumpy driver at the wheel and before long we were at the airport.
Checked in, through security, we located the Heineken bar. 
Two glasses of wine later, we were going to the gate ready to board the flight home. I hated every minute of this part. Still, we were on the plane and flying home. 
We said goodbye to Sydney and goodbye to Australia. China Southern was our airline. The food wasn’t too bad except being served beef and noodles at 3am didn’t really feel right. 
Our stopover was in Guangzhou. It took forever to get through check in and security so no wonder we needed four and a half hours there!
There wasn’t anything really to eat or to do in the airport at all! Time went so slowly and the WiFi didn’t work so we watched a few episodes of eastenders and then we were on the plane ready to go! The best part about this part of the flight!? Nathan fell asleep so when they came round with the drinks I ordered one for me and one for him and got to drink them both!!
Our epic adventure had come to an end. It has definitely been the best eight months with the most amazing experiences. I’m sure I will find other adventure to write about so until then….