I was up fairly early again as I’d been sleeping in someone’s lounge, so spent the first few waking hours in a semi-daze until I found somewhere to snooze for a while. A final BBQ lunch was washed down with definitely non-alcoholic beverages and one of my new friends gave me a lift back to Sydney – thank you Sam!

I had a great weekend, even if I was more exhausted after it than before! I won’t thank everyone simply as I’d miss someone out, and I don’t want to do that. So thank you all!

Back at the hostel I again met Sophie, Delphine and Jerome. They’d stayed on a day longer than expected with their train to Canberra early the next morning. Delphine and I decided to go to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner and – after some slightly not-quite-right directions – we eventually found it about a hundred metres from where we’d had dinner with Sophie’s parents.

Nestled next to Michael Jackson’s shoes, Elvis’s belt, some hand-written Sex pistols lyrics and a gazillion shiny commemorative 12″ discs we chowed down on some very nice food. The barbequeue sauce on my ribs and chicken was amongst the best I’ve ever tasted and we can both recommend the apple cobbler dessert.

We were more or less rolled out the door after our meal and somehow managed to drag our extended bellies back to the hostel by way of Hyde Park where we stopped to look at the war memorial and let a possum sniff our fingers.

Then I found out it was FA Cup night with three matches on ESPN one after the other. I was still awake when the French/Belgian contingent’s taxi arrived to take them to the train station!

With any luck I’ll catch up with them in Australia again, though our plans don’t work out at present. Still, mine’s always subject to change!