Jacqueline and her internship in Sydney, part 5

Cool parties & nice travels: everything about my free time!

Hi everyone,

This is already my 5^th blog and I’m almost four months in Sydney. It’s time to talk about all the fun stuff that comes along with an internship abroad and especially the things that make it feel like you’re on a holiday.

I was never such a party animal back in the Netherlands. However, I’ve gone out a few times here. The nightlife is super nice. I think that’s because of the people you go out with. It’s all new. You often have to pay to get into a club and drinks are expensive but that doesn’t make it less fun! The difference in going out here is - except for the price - also the style. Girls wear different clothes and you know exactly which people have always lived here and which are backpackers, au pairs or interns (like me). The nicest club I’ve been to is the Scary Canary. They always play good music and they have delicious drinks. It’s always busy too.

As you know now I’m not that big of a fan of exploring the nightlife but I am totally into traveling. I’ve made a lot of trips in the past four months that I’ve been here. For example my first one was with Marit to Adelaids and Kangaroo Island. We had an Easter break and thus a long weekend off from work so we made a great tour together for four days. It was a big party to me and all so different from Sydney. By plane it was doable too to travel to places further away.

Also my boyfriend came to visit me in Sydney and together we made a day tour to Port Stephens with the organisation Coast Warriors. Later, my parents came along and together we did a road trip. We travelled by car from Sydney to Melbourne in two weeks’ time and stopped in different places. The best places we went to were Pebbly Beach and Philip Island. Pebbly Beach is a small beach where many kangaroos live. You can touch them and make pictures with them. It’s very quiet there. Not such a tourist place because it’s quite hard to get there.

We did a day tour to Philip Island from Melbourne too, the most exciting thing were the penguins. Every evening, around 1000 penguins came out of the water to go to their nest. This is so funny and cute to see, I can really recommend everyone to go there!

During the end of my internship I also travelled a few times by myself. On a hop on hop off bus to Greyhounds I went in the direction of Cairns and stopped on different places where I had planned some excursions. I already made some amazing trips and saw a lot of Australia, especially wild animals.

The internship days are mostly throughout the week so I have the weekends off. In the beginning I searched a lot for a small job but that’s quite hard to get here. Therefore the weekends were all free! I wanted to see as much as possible in Sydney and I’ve done something every weekend. Actually, I’ve only been home once during my free days. I’ve also never done something alone as I always had someone to go with. For example, I went to the Blue Mountains and Royal National Park. These parks are a bit further away so I went there on Sundays as the public transport is only 2,50$. There’s so much to do in Sydney itself too, like the Taronga Zoo and Sealife, but it has also many parks and of course the Opera House and the Botanical Gardens.

You will absolutely not get bored in Sydney and although I worked a lot throughout the week, it did feel like a holiday. I’ve seen so many nice things and every weekend there was something new to discover and I explored another part of the country and Sydney. In the Netherlands I would’ve worked during the weekends next to my internship so this was definitely so much better.