Our last day in Sydney

Well, the Australia portion of our vacation is at an end. We had some last minute souvenir shopping to do today in Darling Harbor so we got that out of the way in the morning, then got dressed up for the Bjorn Again (ABBA Tribute band) concert at the Opera House.  The concert was good - very energetic - and we enjoyed it a lot, especially attending an event in the Opera House.

After that we took a ferry under the Sydney bridge to the north end of Darling Harbor, found a nice place for supper, then took a bus back to our hotel - and started packing. 

Earlier this week we feared we'd have to ship a package home, but it now looks like everything will fit into our 3 suitcases and we have a spare carry on bag we can use if need be.

So tomorrow is our loooooooong day (36 hours from when we get up until we see a sunset in San Francisco) so that will be a challenge.  Hopefully we can catch a few hours sleep on the plane like we did on the way to Australia.

Visiting the Opera House

This morning Mary and I toured the Sydney Opera House.  It was a very enjoyable and informative tour.  They included several videos about how the design was selected, construction issues, and current issues.  The story was quite amazing as were many of the construction details.

We did see the theater where John Denver performed (which made someone very happy), but were unable to take pictures of it since a band was rehearsing. 

On our way out Mary spotted a poster about an ABBA Concert called Bjorn Again.  She was disappointed that we could not see them in Detroit since they were appearing in June while we were in Australia.  I looked and saw they were performing on June 28th, this coming Saturday.  Since that was a somewhat open day, we bought tickets for the afternoon matinee so now we will actually attend a performance in the Opera House!  Very cool!

Seeing the Beaches

We got a bit of a late start today after deciding to head to Manly for our first outing in Sydney.  First item of business was to get our 7 day travel passes, then we hopped on a bus and headed to Circular Quay where we caught the ferry to Manly.  This ferry ride came highly recommended since it takes you across most of Sydney harbor and you get great views of the Sydney Opera House and Sydney bridge. 

Manly Beach was beautiful! That's it in the picture.  We enjoyed watching the surfers tackle the large waves. We had lunch there, then took the ferry back to Sydney - and promptly changed our plans to check out Bondi beach since is was such a nice day. Bondi had large waves - a lots of surfers.  After Bondi, we walked along the coast to Tamarama beach, then caught the bus back to Sydney where we visited the Sydney Tower for a top-down view of the city.  

Check out the 5 new pictures in my Australia Picture page (Picassa) album.

So after a long day we're back at our hotel and about ready to head out for some supper. It's been a great day in Sydney!

A Day in Sydney

Yesterday the Evan's drove us to the Darling Harbor area of Sydney.  Mary and Pat went to a craft show in the Sydney Exhibition Hall while Robert and I went to the Powerhouse Museum.  

The museum had some nice exhibits on transportation, space, engineering, and various other technologies.  The space exhibit included a Russian lunar rover from the 70's and a lot more on Russian space technology than you would see in any US museum.  Robert and I were intrigued by the 3rd steam engine built by James Watt that could drive a rotating wheel.  Before this invention, steam engines could only provide up and down motion and were mainly used for pumps.  Being able to drive a rotating wheel is what brought on the Industrial revolution.  It also had some cool other engineering exhibits, with an emphasis on Australian accomplishments that I found quite intriguing.

We met up with the girls for lunch, walked through the Chinese Garden, then headed out on a long trek to Macquarie Point to catch a view of the Opera House and Bridge.  We got some great sunset pictures and enjoyed the walk back through the Botanical Gardens.

We then headed to Chinatown where we had a very nice Chinese Dinner with Karen Evans and her boyfriend, Andrew.  While Mary and I recognized some of the menu items, there were a lot of new ones.  We ordered several main dishes so we got to sample each.  That made for a delicious and excellent meal.

Note:  More pictures have been added to the slideshow on the main page of my blog. Look for new ones each day. You can also go to my picassa page to see them as a slideshow.