Thursday, 20 December 2012

Sydney


Had a lovely flight on Business Class from Christchurch, good food, good service, good drinks; Gwen loved the champagne on boarding and had all four courses on the menu.

Our Hotel is in the Rocks area, immediately behind the main transport Hub – Circular Quay, just about as Central as you can get. The balcony on our suite is huge you could fit two double bedrooms from an average hotel onto it and it is only just a bit smaller than the suite behind. The view was spectacular, Sydney Harbour Bridge just off to the left, Sydney Opera House to the right and in between the Cruise Liner Terminal for the big ships that can’t get under the bridge, this is definitely ‘The Best View in Town’.


Circular Quay brings together buses, ferries and railway, as well as being the pedestrian route to the Opera House; there are some interesting water sculptures which are also liked by the bird life.
Next day we went out to Manley on the ferry, the picture of the ferry wharves includes our hotel Quay West, it is the 30+ floor building immediately above the lowish brown building in the middle, our suite was on the 8th floor immediately above the centre of that building. We got 2 very good views of the Opera House and good picture of one of the ferries going towards the harbour bridge off to Darling Harbour.

Manley is a very busy town with a bustling shopping area, decked up for Christmas and it’s own micro brewery.







On the way back we got very close to the Opera House and The Costa Romantica, which sailed that evening.



  That night after a rain shower we saw the Harbour Bridge with a rainbow, and another view of the Opera House.


At the George Hotel in Christchurch we had been given a Teddy Bear called George, with the exhortation to take him far and wide and to send back the pictures. These were taken in the swimming pool of Quay West.


There was a ship in every day as well as 2 or 3 smaller liners in Darling Harbour, this was the Carnival Spirit.
Our tour of the Opera House was absolutely great, we saw some backstage areas and it was in the 1st theatre that Gwen was told no pictures.


We went into the Joan Sutherland theatre which seats 2,670, they were preparing for the matinee performance of Dr. Who’s music with the Sydney Philharmonic Orchestra in conjunction with BBC Worldwide Australasia, we couldn’t get tickets, sold out ages ago and when you think that full price tickets are A$156, allowing for children and concessions an average of at least A$100, over A$250,000 per show, big money.


After the tour we used the foyer café to get the blog up to date, amazingly fast connection.
The ladies toilet was an interesting design, no basins.

When we left we got some amazing shots of the building, the close up of the tiles show how it was built (over 1 million of them). Gwen couldn’t resist getting on a bit of the building and George got into the act. This is an absolutely fabulous building, one the modern wonders of the world.







A local insisted on taking our picture and then Gwen couldn’t get away.

We took a trip to Darling Harbour, past the old warehouses, now preserved along with the Victorian Terraces behind.

 

Darling Harbour is very busy, here we have a Cruise Liner, A freighter, a speed boat, a ferry and a couple of tugs.

As we went back under the Harbour Bridge there were some people walking over it the hard way.
On our last day we went over to Bondi, by ferry to Watsons Bay and bus.

 

As we left for the airport the Costa Romantica was back in Harbour, where had it been for the last 2 days ?

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