Canberra to Sydney

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Another long day on the bus. Breakfast at 7:30 to leave at 8. Breakfast today was not as good as dinner last night. Cold pancakes, and annoying wait staff who didn't seem to understand what was meant when one just asked for a cup of coffee.

Everyone was complaining about the hotel on the bus as we left. According to Bo, this hotel is a bit of a problem and he's mentioned it to Globus, but they haven't taken it off the tour. We'll be filling out our customer surveys tonight, so let's hope they listen to us.

First thing we did was drive around Embassy Row. Some of the embassies are quite interesting, resembling traditional buildings from their lands. And the American Embassy is huge, as expected. After that we drove to the Old Parliament House for a photo op, then on to the New Parliament House for a tour. The building is only 20 years old, and is really modern looking. The Parliament is split into a House of Representatives where electoral districts are based on population, each district having around 91 thousand people. One district in Sydney is tiny, only 29 square kilometers, while one in the Outback is 2900 square kilometers, and has less people! The Senate is by state, each of the 6 states having the same number of senators, with the territories have 1/2 the number as the states.

Our next stop was Mount Ainsley, which gave us a gorgeous view of the city. I didn't see the wagon wheel shape, it all seemed like one urban sprawl to me. Next we went to the War Memorial. Driving there we passed a number of smaller memorials on Anzac Ave, and instead of going into the big museum, I at first walked back down the avenue taking pictures of the ones there. Met up with H in the War Memorial and tried to take a picture of the eteranal flame, but the sun was too bright and the flame too faint to really show in the photos.

Lunch was on a sheep farm about 10 minutes outside the city. We watched the farm dog herd the sheep for a bit, then had lunch, then watched a sheep shearing. A couple of our folks didn't come to the shearing, they were worried about the place on the custom's form where it asks if you've visited a farm and they didn't want to visit one. After lunch, back on the bus for the drive to Sydney. Stopped along the way at a small town in the Southern Highlands which had an alpaca center. Hit Sydney around 6, then drove around for a bit with Bo and Mark (our current bus driver) pointing out the sights and showing us how close things were to our hotel.

Comment about the bus drivers. They have all been nice, but it was a bit weird for me to have so many different ones. On the South Africa trip, we had one driver all the way from Capetown to Port Elizabeth, and then a second one from Durban to Johannesburg. Because we did so much city hopping here by means other than bus, I guess using one driver just wouldn't have made sense, but it was strange. And there were a couple of interesting busses. One of them had a DVD player on it, as I mentioned, we watched the kangaroo documentary, and one of the other ones had a camera in the front and we could actually watch where we were going on the screen.

Oh, and I have one thing to say.

I HAVE NOW SEEN THE SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE IN PERSON!


Tomorrow we do a city tour, then a tour of the opera house and out to Bondi Beach. Tuesday is the Blue Mountains.

And Wednesday we fly home. Sigh....
Tomorrow

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