Ashfield, Australia, Australia

I woke up this morning at about 8am to Jackie and Krissy getting ready for yoga down in Terrigal. Since I couldn’t really sleep, I figured I might as well head down to Terrigal and check out the town. It’s a beautiful little beach with a nice boardwalk up to a lookout over two bays. I walked around the town for a bit and sat at the top of Haven for a while just people watching and checking out the scenery. I met the girls after they finished their yoga and we went to a town called Erina for lunch and to do a bit of shopping at the mall. Of course, when I say we were shopping, I mean the girls were shopping and I was just walking around aimlessly. I did get to check out a camera shop for some information on upgrading to a D-SLR, so that was good.

We went back to Krissy’s house to get our stuff together to head into Sydney for the night. We were going to their friend’s house so we got our stuff together and hit the road. We got to Gabby and Ryan’s house in Sydney for about 6pm and had a few drinks waiting for the taxi to pick us up at 8pm. We headed into Sydney to Cheers Bar where we could watch the Liverpool vs. Manchester United football match. Ryan is from Wales and grew up as a huge Liverpool fan, so we all went over to support his team. It also helps that the Red Sox just bought Liverpool this year, so they are now my team as well.

The bar got absolutely manic with all the fans inside. This was designated as a Liverpool only bar and no Man U fans were allowed in. The same teams had played each other a couple of months ago and they needed 30 police cars to break up fights after the game and it took an hour and a half to get the situation under control. I could say why it was so chaotic before. These fans were intense. After living in Scotland for such a long time I thought I had seen the really intense fans at their worst, but I was wrong. These fans were drunker and more hostile than any of the other fans I had seen in the UK. Maybe it was because they are so far from home they feel like they have to compensate by getting a lot more hammered than they normally would.

Either way it was a very intimidating atmosphere, but we were fortunate enough to be there on a winning night. Liverpool won 3-1 and it never looked like Man U even had a chance. We got a taxi back to Gabby and Ryan’s straight after the match, but it was already 3:30am. That’s the problem with trying to watch sports from another country, it’s hardly ever at a reasonable hour here. We were all pretty exhausted, and a little drunk by that time, so we all went to bed pretty quickly. Although I imagine it took Ryan a bit longer to fall asleep as he was still trying to call all of his mates back in the UK to talk about the match.