Happy New Year!

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After evening drinks and canapés we headed down to Darling Harbour for dinner - this is a nice cosmopolitan area with a number of nice al fresco bars and restaurants. We settled on an Italian (I had a nice salad and then mushroom fettuccini and G has carpachio followed by carbonara). Afterwards we headed next door for a drink before heading home for an early night. One thing that did amaze us was that the new in-thing appears to be uni-sex toilets!! G commented that he hoped for the sake of all the Glasgow girls that they don’t introduce this to All Bar one where Homer could be let loose!

This morning we got up relatively early to make sure we got to the sights before too many crowds and after breakfast headed straight to the Opera House. We were lucky and managed to get on the 9.15am tour of the Opera House which was really interesting - I didn’t realise but there are actually 5 different halls within the House. We got a tour of 3 of them and the Opera Theatre is quite incredible. At the end, we were invited to ask questions to which many asked about constuction, materials, history etc. I asked where the Opera Bar was (Donna had recommended this as a really funky bar) - G was very proud of me!!!

We then headed out and picked up the open top bus tour outside the Opera House and visited the stops we missed out yesterday. We got off again Circular Quay (yesterdays starting point) and walked along the Quay and into the Rocks (the historical area) via a lunch time stubbie (new word for tinnie) stop with an incredible view. After our refreshments, we walked around the Rocks and into the Rocks museum where G had lots of fun.

We then headed back up towards our hotel and decided when we saw the monorail to jump on it to see what it is like. This was cool and went in a circular route for about 4km around the city centre (you could tell we were tourists as we were the only ones who seemed to get on and off at the same station).

After this we went upstairs for some afternoon tea in the club lounge before going to bed for an hour and a half to ensure we have lots of energy for tonight.

G is busy packing our bag for tonight and then we will head down to our reserved picnic spot at about 7 after a club room drink and canape. The weather is great in Sydney for the celebrations - no wind and about 20 degrees forecast for the night. Everyone here is really pleased as the rest of Australia is having very different weather - either really warm at about 40 degrees in Melbourne or really windy in the Gold Coast where the fireworks are rumoured to be cancelled. There is a real buzz about the city for the celebrations - there is something apparently quite spectacular with a time of your life theme and one surprise planned for the midnight display so we are quite excited…

Speak to you tomorrow and Happy new year!!!

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Photos

Fire engine with tinsel
Dont remember you doing this Dad!