Friday, September 17
Sydney
No plans, maybe catch a performance at the Opera House? Get ready to come home...
Our last full day in Australia. It's been a great trip but at this point hard to believe how far we've come and how long we've been gone. At this point, standing on top of the tower in Auckland, New Zealand seems a lifetime ago.
Today we just went around Sydney, seeing some things that we hadn't caught before, and seeing some things again, this time in the sun, not the drenching rain.
We took the downtown monorail around its full length, to see the Darling Harbour area again, then got off at the National Maritime Museum, and decided to see the exhibits. (It's free!) Here's a lighthouse on Darling Harbour:
Here's a guy doing a job that Mom thinks is crazy - hanging upside-down painting the bridge.
You have to pay to see the submarine, destroyer and other boats. But we got some pix.
Inside the exhibit was really neat - lots of details about early sea exploration of the area, Captain Cook, things about the way ships were built and the kind of trading that was done in the earlier years of Australia's history. Here's the light from a now-defunct lightouse, the Tasman lighthouse. See the person below for scale.
After seeing the museum, we took a ferry ride from Darling Harbour over to Circular Quay. We had wanted to do this in 2001 but the weather was always foul. Today it was beautiful. Here's the Harbour Bridge with the Opera House seemingly below.
At Circular Quay we did Sydney Photos - Redux.
The Opera House is really lovely. Each of the tiles on the roof are individual tiles and placed by hand.
That's pretty much it. Tonight we pack and are picked up at 8 Saturday morning for our trip back home. See you when we return!