Chapter 17 - Sydney

When you think of Sydney Australia you probably think of the Sydney Opera House or the Harbor Bridge. Imagine our amazement when we walked into our hotel room and looked out the window!

Did we say hotel room? For some reason when we asked for a harbor view, they gave us an apartment. We had the usual hotel bedroom and bathroom, plus a living room, dining room, kitchen and laundry room! But the view was the main event.

Our hotel, on a map, looks like it’s a block from the harbor but we were surprised to find out that Sydney is hilly almost to the waterfront.

Circular Quay is the main harbor with ferries and water taxis to other bays and inlets within the city. The opera house is on one point while the Harbor Bridge spans another.

We know Harbor Bridge for its annual new year’s fireworks as Sydney is one of the first cities to televise their festivities. Since it opened in October 1998 there have been over 4 million Bridge climbers who walked the 1300 steps to the top. Not us. Not even if, as they claim, it burns 504 calories! Five hundred and four??? Not even if, for a limited time only, you can meet Santa up there and get a free Christmas hat! But we’re happy to take pictures of those braving the climb. In fact we had dinner on the quay with a beautiful view of the bridge and all its climbers.

Sydney Day 2

Today we went to the Opera House for a behind-the-scenes tour. Wow what a place, inside and out. And it’s celebrating 50 years too! Its design was the result of an architecture competition in 1957, but it wasn’t completed until 1973.

The exterior “shells” evoke the cliffs and sails of Sydney harbor. and (physics students should get excited here!) the architect, Jørn Utzon, figured out how to fashion the roof segments out of slices from a sphere. We saw a demonstration film of the process, but were not allowed to take photographs of that, unfortunately.

We also learned the sad story of the architect who never saw his creation completed after he quit the project due to political factors that interfered with his work. He eventually won recognition from the architect community and his son, also an architect, visits Sydney regularly as an advisor. A fascinating life!

The inside is gorgeous too. It accentuates the exterior structure showing off the support trusses and adorned with modern patterns of wood.

We got to briefly watch as they set the stages for the main concert hall and the ballet theatre. No photos allowed again but we were able to experience the magnificence of the halls and the talent of the stage personnel as they set position points on the stage over here, while other adjusted the lighting over there, and even tuned the timpani drums.

Anna Sophie Mutter, one of the greatest, most expressive violinists in the world is playing the main concert hall—sold out for months. But we did manage to snag two tickets to a play we never heard of, The Dictionary of Lost Words. But that’s tomorrow’s story.

The Rocks

After our tour we went to dinner in The Rocks, the oldest part of Sydney where British convicts were brought to serve out their exile. If it was wild and rowdy then, it’s still wild and rowdy now with dozens of loud pubs that have people bursting out into the street. Probably fewer convicts though.

There was a neat three-sided memorial in the Rocks Square that remembered the soldiers, the settlers and the convicts. The first line of the convict’s plaque read:

“The disposal of British criminals became a major problem after the loss of the American colonies.”

Whaaaat???

Sydney Day 3

Today we went back to the Opera House to see a play that is new to us, The Dictionary of Lost Words.

Written by Pip Williams, it is the fictional life story of Esme Nicols, who grew up in the scriptorium of the Oxford English Dictionary. As she learns how to catalogue words discarded by the male-dominated editorial team that includes her widower father, she gradually realizes that many of discarded words relate to women and their experiences. So she decides to rescue them.

It was funny and touching and the actors, especially “Esme” were fantastic!

Of course, now we’re reading the book.

Checking into the “Rainforest“
We took a ferry ride back from Circular Quay to our new hotel, the Wildlife Retreat, inside the Taronga Zoo across the harbor. It reminded us of an African lodge as it was definitely situated in deep bush. Our room windows looked out into dense trees.
In the middle of the night we heard a familiar grunting sound right outside. Sure enough, in the morning a big koala was eating breakfast in a tree we could practically touch! A little while later a big blue kookaburra landed in the same tree, and we weren’t even in an aviary. This one was wild.

Over the course of our three day stay we saw echidnas, the blue and the laughing kookaburras, and a beautiful lizard who came to visit “our” koalas.

Sydney Day 4

The area that holds the animals outside our rooms is called the Taronga sanctuary. Because we are staying in the zoo, we were able to take a behind-the-scenes tour of the sanctuary.

What a great job these rangers have, taking care of birds, koalas, echidnas, kangaroos (tiny through giant!) and platypuses—all rescue animals that can no longer survive in the wild.

Curlew identified!
Remember the screaming bird we described in the Port Douglas chapter? He’s here and we got his picture. He doesn’t look like he would sound so awful!

Mosman: Wealthiest town in New South Wales

We went to Mosman, a pretty little nearby town, for lunch. We had French galettes and crepes.

We were a little startled to be reminded that it’s the Christmas season!

Consider this a Christmas card from us to you!

Taronga Zoo

We can’t forget the zoo itself. As residents of the Wildlife Retreat we were able to enter the zoo an hour before it opened. The zoo had one of the largest aviaries we’ve ever seen. The top was almost as high as the balcony of the Retreat lobby which was built into a steep hillside. We saw dozens of parrots and smaller songbirds. It took us at least ten minutes to walk from one end to the other. At the end we saw Tasmanian devils.

The emus were a favorite of ours as they were free range and we could walk right up to them. Or at least as close as we dared.

Day five. Our last day in Australia

We bid farewell this morning to the blue kookaburra, koala, and lizard that came to our window to say goodbye.
Then we hopped the ferry to Circular Quay to leave our luggage at a storage service as we have several hours until our flight out tonight. And there’s still so much to see!

Sea Life aquarium
We boarded the T train to a stop as close as we could get to the Sydney Sea Life aquarium so we could see all the fish we missed on the reef.
We also saw a huge manatee-like creature called a dugong. His name was Pig.

Harbor cruise
Next we took a harbor cruise since we didn’t have a view of the bridge and opera house from every possible angle yet. The cruise was very nice, serving us wine and a really good charcuterie board containing excellent blue, cheddar and Brie cheeses, salume, plus olives, cornichons, macadamias, fig jam and fried apricots. We sailed through all of Sydney’s inner harbors from the Prime Minister‘s mansion, to ultra modern skyscrapers.
The only thing was, we were given a QR code, which brought up a map, which was nice, interactive, and described all the locations. But we think we prefer listening to a commentary for these types of local cruises. Yeah, we know…poor babies!

On our way back to collect our luggage, this ibis calmly walked through traffic nearly getting hit by two taxis and a tram before escorting us to the Quay.

Friday November 10 dinner

At our final dinner here in Sydney we toasted to our last day on foreign soil. Here’s to the Aperol gang!

We readied to go to the airport for an 8:30 pm flight to Honolulu... where we’ll land at 9:30 this morning. How fun.

We can toast to our first night in Hawaii at our second Friday November 10 dinner tonight.

After adding an amusing road sign at the end of each Australian blog chapter we have run out of time! So here’s a final collection of Aussie humor.

On the last picture we were checking the status of our flight to Honolulu.