Syndey Opera House!!!!

9.29.10

Well,

Sydney has been awesome so far. On Tuesday, we headed back to Town Hall to meet for a free city tour. The tour lasted about 3 hours and we walked all over the city and learned a lot. After wards, we took some more pictures of both the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House since it was during the day and we were in a sweet photo taking spot. Then we walked back through the city looking for lunch and found a salad place and tried to take the free bus back to hotel. Unfortunately, it was super packed and not worth using. We finally made it back and enjoyed the food before changing for the opera. We found that there is a train station less than two blocks from the hotel that goes straight to Circular Quay with one stop in between. We took it and were at Circular Quay in less than 10 minutes. At 4:30pm, we had a tour through the Opera House. We learned history and saw the intimate theaters on the lower floors along with the opera theater. Once we got done with that we went and grabbed some calamari and wine at East Bank before Rigoletto. We sat in the balcony 6 levels back and off to the right. The opera was kind of strange but the singers and orchestra were awesome. The weirdest thing was that the bows had no music and only the main characters bowed and not the entire company. It was almost surreal that we were seeing an opera in the Sydney Opera House. We finally got back to the hotel around 11pm.

Wednesday morning came very early at 6:30am. We were supposed to meet our shuttle at 7:10 outside the Travelodge, but found out about 7:30 that the shuttle had a flat tire and wasn’t going to arrive until 8ish. When it picked us up, we were heading to the Blue Mountains. Our tour started off b stopping at the Featherdale Wildlife Park. This is very similar to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Brisbane but a little smaller and a little less organized. Then we went to one of the national park to learn how to throw a boomerang. After a few attempts, both Erica and I kind of figured out how to throw it but did not throw it successfully all the way back before we left. Then we headed up to the Wentworth Falls Country Club for lunch. We had fish and chips and it was tasty. Then we were off to Scenic World. This was the rain forest in the Blue Mountains. We rode the cableway (super steep) down to the walking path. We walked up around through the forest, passed the mine and to the train. The train took us back to the top of the mountain. This is the steepest train in the world that runs at 52º. The seats in the train car were actually tilted back so when we were at the 52º mark, we were basically sitting straight up. It was cool. Then we loaded the shuttle and headed to Leura. This was a small mountain city and we did some walking and shopping. Then we took a riding tour of the Olympic site. It is still in use constantly. From there we went to the ferry station to get a ferry back to Circular Quay. The ferry got back into the harbor just as the sun went down and the city was gorgeous. After returning to land, we went and found a sushi place for dinner. Erica had three goals while in Australia: 1) hold a koala, 2) go to the Sydney Opera House, and 3) go to a night club. Since we had completed the first two, it was time for the third one. We went searching for a place called the Side Bar. We thought it was near the museum so we wandered for a bit. Upon not finding it, we stopped at the Strand Hotel for a drink. We decided to ask for directions and ended up finding it about 6 blocks on the other side of our hotel. We navigated our way that and stayed for about an hour. They had a band playing and a DJ for when they took their break. It was really loud and like every other night club I have been too since I got here.