After our balloon flight and breakfast on Wednesday we
headed back to the airport for our final charter flight with Alliance Air.
Georgina even had a bit of a surprise for us - being a private charter, we
didn't have to go through all the arrival fuss at Australia's largest airport.
Our pilot just taxied right into the General Aviation area where our bus was
waiting for us. We and our luggage were all transferred to the bus right there,
and off we went to the Intercontinental Hotel. We had a final 1 hour time
change (who knew Australia had a weird 1/2 hour time zone like we do - Uluru is
1 1/2 hours behind Sydney), so it was almost 5:00 by the time we got into our
room. Dinner was in Cafe Opera here at the hotel, buffet but very good and quite
extensive. (And probably expensive too!) The only issue we have with trips like
this is that there are so many buffet meals that we start to look forward to
ordering from a menu and having our food delivered to the table (yes, we know,
and can already hear those teeny-weeny finger violins playing).
Thursday was the big Sydney Tour day, but first things first
- every tour has a group photo, taken at one of the highlight locations if
possible. The iconic photo spot for this tour, of course, is the Sydney Opera
House. Here is a picture of the picture:
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You might notice it seems a bit cloudy and damp? The weather
report said "slight chance of showers late in the day". Who knew
"late in the day" meant 9:30 AM? Their forecasters are apparently as
accurate as ours, so there was about a 30 minute "rain delay" in
getting the picture taken.
After the photo, we met our guide for the group tour of the
Opera House. The decision to build an Opera House was made in the late 1940s
and it was around 1950 that the location on Bennelong Point was determined.
Then, of course, there was a worldwide call for designs. The one submitted by
Danish architect Jørn Utzon originally went into the reject pile, but one of
the design judges came in late and insisted on looking at all of the
submissions again, and the rest is history. The opera house was supposed to
have been constructed over 3 years (1957-1960) at a cost of $7 million; in the
end (and partly because of government interventions) it was finally opened by
Queen Elizabeth II in 1973 after having cost a total of $102 million. The
majority of the money ended up being raised through holding a lottery (remember
that Aussies love to gamble). It has become not only a well-used venue for all
kinds of productions and events, but one of the world's iconic structures.
Utzon actually quit the project in 1966 after having numerous rows with the New
South Wales government, and it was completed without him. He never came back to
Australia; although he was re-engaged in 1999 to oversee designs for additions
and changes to the buildings, the site work was all done through his son Jan,
also an architect. Utzon died in 2008, but until then continued to be an
integral force in all matters of architecture and design of the Opera House.
Utzon has a room named in his honour; in 2003 he was awarded the highest
international prize in architecture for all of his work, but most prominently because of this design, and in 2007 the Opera House
was included in the World Heritage list.
Our tour took us into some of the theatres as well as the main
concert hall. Unfortunately we couldn't take any photos there because stages
were set or being set up for productions, but here are some pictures in and
around the Opera House.
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| The roof tiles - all manufactured in Denmark and shipped to Sydney. They are triple-fired ceramic, waterproof and self-cleaning in the rain. |
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| The bridge from a different angle - reflected in the glass above one of the outer walkways |
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| Another reflection photo - look carefully and you can see Larry, and Monica with the camera in front of her face! |
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| Looking up the inside concrete wall. The theatres are actually separate contained buildings inside of the shells. |
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| The grand foyer |
After our Opera House tour, we headed down to the Man o' War
Steps where we boarded our private Captain Cook Cruises catamaran for lunch and
a harbour tour. We had seen quite a number of Captain Cook vessels of all sizes
in the harbour at various times, but had never seen this sailing cat. The sails
were never hoisted because of the cloudy weather and a bit of drizzle that fell
during lunch, but that didn't take anything away from the tour.
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| Rose Bay - one of the exclusive waterfront areas, even though it doesn't have views of the Opera House or Bridge |
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| A small sample of the very, very expensive real estate in the Sydney area. The houses on the water probably go for $20-$30 million. |
After that, we still weren't finished for the day. Back on
the bus, our driver, Jack, drove us around the Rocks and then headed out to the
Eastern Suburbs and Bondi Beach.
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| Top of the hill at South Head near Watson's Bay |
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| This is the entrance into Sydney Harbour. North Head is on the opposite side. Captain Cook actually sailed right past here to Botany Bay on his expeditionary voyage. It wasn't until a few weeks afterward that the harbour was discovered and settlement established. |
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| The lighthouse at Watson's Bay |
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| Bondi Beach - certainly was different weather from our first visit. The waves were crashing, and the marked swimming area was quite narrow. |
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| These are all old houses built in the late 1800s. The outsides are heritage and can't be changed, but the interiors have all been upgraded, and, just like in Melbourne, are selling for over $1 million each. |
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| Oxford St. Looks quite different than its London namesake, but has just as many good shops and is more colourful. |
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| More Oxford St. |
Once back at the hotel, we had the evening free. Already
being quite familiar with most of inner Sydney, we hopped on a ferry to Darling
Harbour and found Nick's Seafood Restaurant.
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| Larry's first Scampi |
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| A seafood feast with Calamari, Soft Shell Crab and Fish |
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| Darling Harbour from the Pyrmont Ferry Dock |
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| Full moon over Sydney Harbour |
Our Friday morning was taken up by a visit to the
Featherdale Wildlife Farm, and lunch was to be served in stages during a Sydney
Foodie Tour. Actually it was not really a "lunch" tour, but our guide
for the day, Rowan, said in all the years he had been doing this tour no one
has ever asked for a recommendation for lunch at the end. He is still batting
1000 in that regard!
At Featherdale, we could pose with the Koalas (but not hold
them - this is one of the states where it isn't allowed), feed the Kangaroos,
and check out birds and wildlife from around Australia. It was quite an
enjoyable morning as you can see from the photos:
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| A Cassowary - not seen often in the wild but important to the growth of the forests. There are some plants whose seeds will not root and grow unless they've been eaten by a Cassowary first. |
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| Koala - will do anything for food. Even pose with these weird people! |
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| Feeding our new friends |
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| Larry and his long-tailed posse |
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| Somebody woke this guy up, and he couldn't get back to sleep. He was doing laps. |
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| He may not look real, but he was! Just happened to stop and pose beside the sign. |
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| Little Penguins (or Little Blue Penguins), the only ones that nest in Australia. |
Back on the bus, we returned to Sydney and picked up our
Foodie guide at the Olympic Stadium. The venues built for the 2000 Olympic
Games still get lots of use; they had just played the final of the Asian Cup of
soccer while we were on our tour - Australia won! - and had 79,000 people in
the main stadium.
Our first stop was P.R. Renieri Italian Deli in a western
suburb called Five Dock. The couple who own it immigrated from Sicily in the
1950s and have become fixtures in the Italian food world in the city.
Next, we stopped at the Sydney Fish Market on Pyrmont Bay,
west of Darling Harbour. There is a commercial area that is busy from the
middle of the night until about 9:00 in the morning, where the restaurants,
hotels and exporters come to buy huge amounts of fresh fish (according to Rowan
about $500,000 worth of fish is sold every day), and then there is the public
market which we visited. We were itching to get hold of a 'barbie' so we could
cook some of this amazing seafood ourselves, but we settled for the "light
snack" Georgina and Rowan set out for us; oysters, prawns, fish n' chips
and calamari!
Our next stop was at an interesting spot that was originally
movable but is now in one place. Harry's Cafe d'Wheels, when it was first
opened as a cart, had to be moved by 1 foot every day to comply with city
bylaws, so it went back and forth along the same short route. Eventually this
law was changed, and Harry could keep his pie cart in one place. Here it is,
near the end of the Woolloomooloo Wharf. Harry's claim to fame is his Tiger
Pies. These are traditional Aussie pies (beef, chicken or vegetarian) in full
pastry, topped with a heap of mashed potatoes, a scoop of mushy peas and a
ladle of gravy. Heart attack on a plate, you say? This is what it looks like - we
split one because there was NO WAY we would be able to get through two. Truth
be told, we barely got through this ONE!!
To wash down that pie, our next stop was only a couple of
blocks away at the Fitzroy Hotel. Streetcorner hotels in the original parts of
Sydney have traditionally not been places to stay, but have been public houses
for food and drink. So you might find hotels on all four corners of an
intersection in the Rocks, but none of them will rent you a room for the night.
The Fitzroy has been around for a long time, and now also has the distinction
of being the only pub in Sydney with a live theatre attached to it. Here the
group got to try three different kinds of beer, a lager and two ales. We
weren't so much interested in the beer as in the decor:
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| You gotta love that Aussie sense of humour! |
We have mentioned Woolloomooloo a few times in these posts. Though it was a "pretty rough" part of town 20 years ago, it is now a pretty trendy place with lots of restaurants, a few good hotels and
some pretty pricey condos and houses. It is around the eastern side of the
Botanic Gardens so it doesn't have a view of the Opera House or the Bridge.
Rowan was telling us about some of the rhymes children had to learn to remember
how to spell it, sort of like Mi-ssi-ssi-ppi, but longer. The very best way is
one that he pointed out to us after we left the Fitzroy:
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| Self-explanatory |
Our final foodie stop was for dessert - gelato at a place
called Messina in the Darlinghurst area. The shop is really quite small, so all
40 of us lining up to get it made it a little difficult for the other
customers. Messina's claim to fame is the 40 varieties of gelato they have on
offer at any time. Some of them have really wacky names, a la Ben & Jerry's. Since we couldn't get close
enough to the counter to check out many of the flavours, we both had the TimTam
Slam, which was coffee flavoured ice cream with biscuit and chocolate chunks in
it, to mimic those famous Tim Tam cookies and a cup of coffee. Biting off the
chocolate covered ends of the TimTam, holding one end in your coffee and
slurping it through the cookie is what is known as the TimTam Slam here in
Australia.
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| The counter |
Waddling back across the street to the bus, all forty of us
promptly lapsed into a "food coma" until we arrived back at the hotel
As we mentioned earlier, nobody wanted lunch after all that! The rest of the
day was on our own, so we spent a few hours back in our room reading. Oddly
enough, by about 6:00 PM we were actually getting a little bit hungry, so we
walked down to Circular Quay and hopped the ferry back out to Darling Harbour
and and ended up having dinner at the Meat & Wine Co. overlooking Cockle
Bay. Aussies do know how to cook a mean steak!
The actual last day of the tour, Saturday, was a day at leisure
with the only planned activities being the Farewell Reception at the hotel and
Dinner at a fancy restaurant not far from the hotel. Even though it is good
that there is a day free to do what you want, we would be hard pressed to find
just one or two exceptional places to go or things to do in that limited time. Maybe that's why we spent a week here already!
We used the day to walk, again, around a part of Sydney that
we had seen on the tour but thought might merit a closer look. This time we
went around the west side of the Rocks, through the finger wharves at Dawes Point,
past the huge construction site at Barangaroo and back into the Central
Business District. We ended up in Hyde Park at the Sydney War Memorial and
worked our way back from there. Here's the map:
And some photos of what we saw:
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| Looking across at Luna Park from under the Bridge |
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| Condos and boat slips at Dawes Point, Walsh Bay. We checked the real estate agent board nearby - these places rent for $1400 to $1800 per week! |
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| The Cenotaph in Martin Place - sadly the "terrorist incident" earlier this year happened about 500 yards from here. |
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| Martin Place pedestrian area |
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| Sydney's Strand Arcade |
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| Hyde Park |
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| The War Memorial. Like in Melbourne, erected to commemorate WW I, but later rededicated for all of those who died in armed conflicts. |
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| St. Mary's Cathedral, home of the Catholic Church in Australia |
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| In front of the library, a statue of Captain Matthew Flinders, and in the background, his cat, Trim, without whom he never sailed. Smart man that Captain! |
The evening was really great. Our pre-dinner cocktails were
served in the Harbour Room at our hotel and we were driven the few blocks to
Australia Square (which is round - but then, Circular Quay is square, so go
figure) for dinner at the revolving O-Bar Restaurant on the 47th floor.
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| These two are from the Harbour Room |
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| The rest are from the O-Bar as it revolved |
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| Every Saturday night there are fireworks at Darling Harbour. We got to see them from high up |
A few of us walked back to the hotel after dinner and said
our goodbyes. Some of our group was going home on Sunday morning while others
were heading off to New Zealand to do the Spotlight tour there. It turns out
that most people don't plan as far in advance as we do, and couldn't get on the
full Australia and New Zealand tour as it sells out very quickly, so they
booked them back-to-back. We certainly hope they'll have a good time.
While everybody else was flying somewhere, we got to sleep
in (of course our internal alarm clocks still woke us up around 7:15). Our only
planned excursion for the day was a walk to the Opera House to see the musical
'Sweet Charity', in one of its final performances. We had bought the tickets
online after the tour, since we had seen the theatre and knew that there wasn't
a bad seat. The venue was one of the smaller theatres, the performers were
excellent and the show was very good. We took a bit of break afterwards to work
on the blog, and then walked around to the Rocks for dinner. We ate at a
restaurant called Pony, not far from the Lowenbrau.
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| Pony Restaurant; open kitchen and wood-fired grill |
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| Monica getting ready to create her Affogato Coffee - vanilla ice cream with a shot of espresso and a shot of Amaretto (or Frangelico) |
Only two days left, and by now we're so familiar with Sydney
that we could practically be locals. In fact, some of our travel companions
were very impressed that we knew exactly where we had walked and did it without
needing a map! As one commented, "You guys must like this city." Ya
think?
