Sydney City Highlights

Left the hotel at 8:15 this morning and did a little driving tour around the city before heading to a tour of the Sydney Opera House. Opera House is a bit of a misnomer in my opinion, Sydney Opera Center would be a better name, since there are actually 3 small theaters (between 500-750 seats), a concert hall and the actual opera house in it. It's even more bizarre looking inside then I expected, you can actually see the concrete used to build the shells. The exterior tiles are all ceramic and apparently made by only one company in Sweden that is now out of business. As you may expect, I took LOADS of typically weird Mindy pictures both inside and out.

After the opera house we drove across the way to what's called Mrs. Macquarie's chair. Mrs. Macquarie was the wife of the fifth governor of New South Wales, and she was apparently very homesick for England, so he carved here a stone bench so she could watch the ships come in. It has some great views of the Harbor!

Next we drove to Circular Quay and caught a ferry boat for a cruise in the harbor. It was an hour long and I think I took pictures of the Opera House and the Sydney Harbor bridge from every angle possible from the water. The boat went out past Fort Dennison, then back towards and under the bridge, then on to Darlington Harbour. We got off near the aquarium and our bus met us there, instead of taking the boat back to where we started.

Finally we drove out to Bondi beach where we had lunch and then had a tour of the Bondi Beach Surf Club, where they talked about surf rescue. It was pretty interesting, except for the migraine I've been nursing all day.

Tonight we have dinner in the Summit restaurant, which is a revolving restaurant with a view of the Harbor. I'm hoping to be able to see the Opera House lit up for the night.

We're off to the Blue Mountains tomorrow, then our farewell dinner at a waterfront restaurant tomorrow night. I can't believe that in 2 days I'll be back in the States!

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