My Close Encounter with Robbie Williams

I got back yesterday from a weekend in Sydney. My friend Hayley and I went up for the Robbie Williams concert, part of his Close Encounters world tour. It was an awesome weekend.

We left Canberra on Friday morning, nice and early, we caught the train and it left at 6:37am. The train journey was fairly uneventful although we did manage to make friends with a little boy named Jake, he chatted to us for a large amount of the trip, while his father shook his head in disbelief at the stories we were told.

We arrived in Sydney at about 11am, and we set off to find our hotel, it wasn't too far from Central Station, but we got a little lost and walked a bit more than we needed to. Still we found it eventually and were able to leave our bags there. We then set out for Taronga Zoo, the first thing we had planned for our big Sydney weekend.


We caught a bus to Circular Quay, and the Ferry across the Harbour to the Zoo. I got some lovely pictures of the Harbour from the ferry. The zoo was fantastic, we saw the new elephants that have recently arrived from Thailand, as well as all our other favourites, the lions and tigers, the meercats as well as lots of other animals. We also went to the Seal Show, which was cool, especially as Hayley decided we should sit in the front row. One of the seals showed a new trick, that involved everyone in at least the front row getting wet, good thing it was quite warm and I dried pretty quickly. We also saw the Free Flight Bird Show, where we saw lots of different Australian birds, including a Wedge-Tailed and a Sea Eagle, a couple of Owls, and several smaller birds. A boy in the audience got to hold an owl on his hand, and Hayley had a galah take a gold coin from her hand, and then return it a short time later. We caught the sky Safari cable car that runs above the zoo, and goes down to wharf, then the ferry back to Circular Quay.

We then went back to the hotel to check in and get ready for dinner. We had dinner at Nick's Bar and Grill at Darling Harbour, beautiful seafood. We share the Seafood Buffet for Two, which had Lobster, Crab, Prawns, Oysters, Mussels, and Calamari. It was all so beautiful, I love seafood, especially Lobster, which I don't get to have very often. I also had a Mango Daiquiri, so lovely, I knew there was some things I liked about summer ;0)

On Saturday we went shopping, hooray. We walked down to Paddy's Market to catch the Monorail into the city. We went to Pitt St Mall, I managed to find Haigh's chocolates, yum. We also went to the huge David Jones, it was amazing, and so much pretty stuff! We saw Manolo Blahniks 30% off! Then it was back to the hotel to get ready for the main event, Robbie Williams.


We got to the stadium and waited in line for a while before the gates opened and we were able to go in. We bought t-shirts on the way in and then found out place on the oval, we were glad to sit down for a while as we waited, and waited, and waited. Robbie came on at 8:30 and he was awesome. He was really chatty, and funny, he promised that if he ever gets kicked out of America (where he currently lives) he will move to Australia. I took a few pictures, and I was able to watch the big screens, occasionally peoples heads moved and I could glimpse the stage, plenty of times through the evening I wished I was taller. It was so great though, he is an amazing performer, a true entertainer! He sang some of my favourite songs, including Come Undone, Angels, and Make Me Pure. He also sang a couple of songs with his best friend Jonathon Wilkes which was cool.

Sunday we spent the day at Darling Harbour, we had brunch and saw Deep Sea 3D at the imax, and went to the Aquarium before heading to Central Station to catch the train. Funny thing our little friend Jake was sitting right in front of us this time and we got some more interesting stories from him again before he went to sleep. The journey seemed to take forever, especially as the train was delayed in the first place. We were very glad to get home, the whole weekend was great though, well worth the exhaustion.