Jacqueline during her internship in Sydney, Australia – Part 5

Awesome Parties & Fun Trips: All About My Free Time!

Hi everyone,

It’s already my fifth blog, and I’ve been in Sydney for almost four months now. In this blog, it’s finally time to talk about all the fun that comes with doing an internship abroad – especially the things that make it feel like a holiday.

Back in the Netherlands, I was never really into going out. But here, I’ve gone out quite a few times already. Going out in Sydney is so much fun. I think that’s mainly because of the people you go with – everything is new and exciting. The clubs usually charge an entry fee and drinks are expensive, but that doesn’t make it any less fun. Besides the price, nightlife here is also different in style. The girls wear very different outfits, and you can easily tell who’s a local and who’s a backpacker, au pair, or like me – here for an internship. The best club I’ve been to is Scary Canary – great music, tasty mixed drinks, and always super crowded.

As you now know, I’m not big on partying, but I absolutely love going on trips. And I’ve already been on quite a few during these past four months. The first trip I took was with Marit – we went to Adelaide and Kangaroo Island. We both had a long weekend off during Easter and decided to make a four-day trip out of it. It was so much fun and felt completely different from Sydney. Flying made it easy to travel further distances.

My boyfriend also came to visit me in Sydney, and we did a day tour to Port Stephens with a youth travel company called Coast Warriors. And lastly, my parents came over and we went on a road trip together. We drove from Sydney to Melbourne over the course of two weeks and stopped at many different places along the way. The highlights of this trip were definitely Pebbly Beach and Phillip Island. Pebbly Beach is a small beach where tame kangaroos live. You can pet them, take photos with them, and it’s super peaceful – not touristy at all, since it’s pretty hard to get there.

We did Phillip Island as a day trip from Melbourne, and the highlight there was the penguin parade. Every evening, about 1,000 penguins come out of the water and waddle back to their burrows. It’s so funny and adorable to watch – I can highly recommend it!

At the end of my internship, I’ll go traveling on my own. I’ll be using a hop-on hop-off Greyhound bus to travel up to Cairns, stopping at different places along the way and doing lots of excursions. So far, I’ve already taken some amazing trips and seen a lot of Australia – especially its wildlife!

My internship days are usually during the week, so I have weekends off. I did look for a part-time job in the beginning, but that turned out to be quite difficult. So I’ve had every weekend free, which has been great. I wanted to see as much of Sydney as possible, so I’ve done something almost every weekend. I think there’s only been one weekend where I stayed in and did nothing. I also never really did anything alone – I always had someone to go with. I’ve visited the Blue Mountains and Royal National Park, which are a bit further away, so I went on Sundays when public transport only costs $2.50.

There’s also a lot to do in Sydney itself, like visiting Taronga Zoo, Sea Life Aquarium, many parks, and of course the Opera House and Botanical Gardens.

So there’s definitely no reason to get bored in Sydney. Even though I worked long days during my internship, it still felt like a holiday. I’ve seen so many beautiful things – every weekend brought something new, and I discovered more and more of the city and the country. In the Netherlands, I would’ve been working every weekend next to my internship, so this was definitely a much better deal.