Sydney

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Another Day, Another City
With an early morning 3-hour flight from Christchurch, we were checked into our hotel by 9 AM and ready to tour! After a subway ride to downtown, we hopped the double-decker bus (obviously a cheeky knock off from the London buses) and toured the city of Sydney.

In my mind (what I have left of it), the most iconic structure in Sydney is the Sydney Opera House. It only took 3 hours on a bus to finally get there, and then we were too close to actually take a good picture. Fortunately, with proper prior planning, we got off a few stops earlier across the bay for that special Kodak moment.

Since neither of us are opera fans, we didn’t go inside, and certainly didn’t listen. The building is designed by a Danish architect and took eight years to complete. Some of the time was due to technical difficulties, the rest due to financial difficulties. Its total cost in the early 1970’s was AU $ 45 million (about $36 mil USD at the time) - a bargain at today’s construction costs.

The Opera House is right next door to the famous Sydney bridge that was built in the early 1930’s and employed 3,000 workers for 9 years during the Great Depression - yep, it affected Australia too.

Many of the streets, parks, communities, etc. of greater Sydney are named after their English counterparts. For example, we have Liverpool and Oxford streets, the Haymarket district and Hyde Park.

Saturday morning we got up semi early and started searching for an alternative to a train or a bus to get us up the east coast of Australia to Brisbane for our flight out. We have about a week to get there, so there’s not hurry. We settled on a rental car where we would have far more flexibility and a more comfortable trip. After getting over the initial shock of driving on the “wrong” side of the road, the trip went fairly well.

I originally tried to combine the 800+ mile trip into this single blog, but it just got too big. You’ll just have to read about that in the next installment.

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Photos

Sydney Harbour
That's the Sydney Opera House and the Bay Bridge in the far center. This is the starting point for the annual Sydney to Hobart yacht race.

Sydney Opera House
What could be more iconic of Sydney than its famous Opera House?

Double Decker Bus
Just like London, mate!

Comments

[Cousin Kathy again]

Brisbane
oops....some how I lost the first message I tried to start. Anyhow, maybe you can hook up with David somewhere near Brisbane....Queensland isn't too far from there (I think.....) I hope you don't mind, but I am going to forward your blog to him and maybe he will get in touch with you. He's a GREAT guy!!! So if you hear from a David Riggall....just know he's a very dear friend of mine. I think he tried to call you before you left on your big journey. Keep up the good work on the blogs.....they are great! Be Safe! Kathy :)