The last day…

My last day in Sydney! And it was spent with all my favorite people. Late morning, I met Mike and Melvin down at Circular Quay and we crossed the harbour bridge one last time, just like we did to start the year. The weather was gorgeous but cool. The view, as always, was fantastic. After nearly a year of living here, I never got sick of seeing the Opera House or harbour bridge. We got to the other side and went to get lunch at Pizza Hut just like we did in February, but it was closed [!?] so we went across the street and had pizza from an Italian restaurant instead, and ate it down on the grass next to the bridge, overlooking the harbour. Delicious, and an overall bittersweet experience… obviously great, but sad because I was leaving tomorrow and would never have this again.

After eating, we sat around for awhile and then took another picture of us by Luna Park, naturally, just like the first time. We walked around to the other side of the bridge and sat there for a long time, watching the boats go by and planning for a future reunion. No one wanted to get up and leave.

Buuuut eventually we did, and I had my last walk back across the harbour bridge. We wandered around to the Botanic Gardens and sat there for awhile too. It was really the perfect way to spend my last day in Sydney… just soaking up the amazing harbour with my first and closest friends there.

By 5:30 we parted ways, and I made my way down to Darling Harbour to meet up with people from Unimates for our final dinner, held at an Italian restaurant called Baia San Marco. I think we had 23 people show up, not surprising since we were paying $20 per person for the meal. I had some kind of fettuccine, which was decent but not great. At this point, I started feeling sad about leaving, which I really didn’t want to happen since it was my last night. I couldn’t really stop thinking about it though, so I didn’t enjoy the night as much as I should have. Still, it was nice to see the people I’d spent so much time with this year. After dinner, we walked across to the other side of Darling Harbour and some of us got gelato, and 4 of us got separated from the rest of the group. We finally found out everyone else was at the Pyrmont Hotel, so we met them there. Not sure if I’ve ever mentioned this, but Australia has a lot of rustic-looking hotels that are known mainly for their pubs rather than accomodation. It has all the typical ritzy hotels, like the Hilton or Sheraton, but also lots of these pub hotels. So we were hanging out at this pub for a bit, before parting ways around 10:00. I still had to pack everything up… ugh.