Day 3 in Sydney - part 2

On Thursday, as we left the Botanic Gardens, we were at the "back" side of the Sydney Opera House...

Coming up to the Opera house from the side away from Sydney Harbour

We walked around to the Harbour side and this was our view.

We found a bench and sat for a while, enjoying the beautiful day and the views.

Overseas Cruise Terminal on the other side of Circular Quay -- no cruise ship in port on Thursday

We decided to take a tour of the Sydney Opera House -- so we purchased tickets and then joined with our tour guide...

Our guide and a few of our fellow-tour participants outside the Opera House

We first visited the Joan Sutherland Theatre -- this is coming up to the wall at the back of the stage area... you may be able to see that the insides of the building (the theatre) are built inside the "shells" that form the iconic outside of the building.

Another view showing how the inside is built within and separate from the outer structure.

This is just under the "shell". The glass here is at an angle so even at night, there will not be reflections of the light from inside, so you could easily see outside.

We then went into the Joan Sutherland Theatre, used for opera and ballet performance. We had been cautioned that we could not take pictures inside the theatre due to copyright protection of the ballet's scenery that was visible onstage. (We couldn't detect that it was anything so amazing, but... whatever!)

After leaving the Joan Sutherland Theatre, we walked between the two large theatre buildings...

-- between the two, we had an up-close view of the covering on the shell...

Carl between two of the large shells.

We proceeded into the Concert Hall - the scheduled performance was for a showing of the movie "Gladiator" with the symphony providing the musical effects for the movie.

Since there were no scenery components on the stage, we were able to take pictures inside.

We were seated in an area of the hall while our tour guide told us about the theatre.

The area right behind where our guide was standing was the box where Queen Elizabeth II sat while she enjoyed a performance when she came to officially open the the Sydney Opera House in 1973.

A panoramic picture of the inside of the Concert Hall.

As our tour finished, we checked out the gift shop, and then Carl found a place he wanted to sit...

... Carl wants to get a big screen TV for our park model -- he thinks this one may be almost big enough!

Looking back at the Opera House as we headed toward Circular Quay.

We had lunch at a burger place alongside Circular Quay and enjoyed ferries and other boats coming and going while protecting our burger and fries from marauding pigeons!

A McDonald's in a less-than-usual building design!

Carl had taken a picture of the Central Business District on Wednesday; one of the buildings was SalesForce and he asked his sons if one of them uses SalesForce software in their work -- Scott indicated that his company installed displays in the lobby of the building and that they are the largest LED displays in the southern hemisphere...

.. so we had to go see them! The receptionist took our picture in front of part of the display...

... then the security guard came over and suggested that we stand right up against the windows to get the best picture!

We stopped by to see "Maybe Sammy's" -- supposed to be one of the top 50 bars in the world (not sure by whose measuring scale!).

We walked down to Barangaroo (where we had walked on Thursday) and had dinner at one of the harbour-side restaurants. They were having an Aperol event (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperol) -- evidently an Italian orange colored liqueur. There were some street performers that were probably there due to this event.

An interesting bar/restaurant -- Barangaroo House (https://www.barangaroohouse.com.au/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gbp&utm_content=Barangaroo_House&utm_term=plcid_92893900637765389)

On our way back, we decided to try walking through an underground area for Wynyard Station -- we weren't sure whether we could walk all the way through without having to board a train, but we were able to do so. There were a number of shops underground.

Up on top were the light rail trains

Another day with lots of walking, but we're learning our way around the city!

Day 3 in Sydney - part 1

Our body clocks are not yet re-set, so we were up early on Friday morning. We had planned to see several things, and one of them were the Botanic Gardens that opened at 7am, so we decided to head over that way, leaving our hotel before sunrise.

The sun was rising just as we reached the Botanic Gardens.

At the entrance -- the gardens were established in 1873, so they are over 150 years old.

Beautiful plants, and many of them had identification labels

We headed into the succulent garden in honor of our friend from Venture Out, Dan...

Many of the plants in this area looked "otherworldly" to us...

This was the "Alluaudia procera" up close; notice how the leaves grow in measured rows along the stems/trunks of the plant.

This plant reminded us of the Medusa that had snakes for hair or the Hydra that would grow two heads every time one was cut off (why were we thinking of Greek mythology? I can't answer that!).

This plant was so interesting looking...

... here's a close up -- from a distance, it might look like leaves, but it was more like an organ pipe cactus.

This one was so feathery it didn't look real.

Carl surmised that if you trip and fell on this, its black spikes would kill you!

A view of Sydney Tower Eye from the Succulent garden

Another interesting design on a plant

While we were in the Succulent Garden, every few minutes flocks of large, very noisy white birds would fly overhead. They would land high up in trees nearby, and soon take off, again calling out very loudly. At one point when they had landed on the snag of a tree nearby, I thought I could see top-knots on their heads. We asked a worker at the garden, and he confirmed that Cockatiels are native and wild in the area, and they are very noisy -- so we're pretty sure we were seeing a flock of Cockatiels.

In the distance, we could see Sydney Harbour Bridge (with a palm tree seemingly growing up through its middle)...

... and the high-rises of downtown Sydney.

We think that this was an Ibis.

We walked out along the peninsula that extended beyond the Botanic Gardens -- there were 3 Australian Navy ships docked along a base on the other side of the water...

...with the sun behind, it is hard to see the ship well, but we thought this was an amphibious landing ship.

As we got around to the other side of the peninsula, we could see the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge -- with the sun only recently up, they were beautifully lit. There were *lots* of people out running and enjoying the beautiful day, so we were able to get another tourist to take our picture.

Another view of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge -- this time nicely framed with tree limbs. There were also a large group of kayakers below us -- it appeared to be maybe a class or a tour group.

By this time, we were getting a bit hungry, so were happy to see a Coffee and Gelato stand -- it was unfortunately closed, but Carl pretended to be getting an ice cream provided to him!

The benefit of jet lag is that we're getting up early and starting our day!

Day 2 in Sydney

After our long trip to Sydney with late arrival on Wednesday, we were glad that we didn't have any specific plans that we needed to do on Thursday. If we counted Wednesday as our first day in Sydney (even though we didn't arrive until after dark), then Thursday would be day 2.

One of the things we wanted to do is to see if it would be walkable from our hotel to the Overseas Cruise Terminal where we would board the ship on 9April. We still have several days to get that figured out, but seeing Sydney Harbour was also on our to-do list, so we decided to start with that.

We had made our hotel booking through the cruise line site. It was called the Tank Stream Hotel -- but we learned that the name was changed to Rydges Australia Square. We had an option of booking a room with breakfast, but it seemed a high price so we opted to get a room without breakfast and planned to find a place for breakfast in the area.

It turns out that Australia Square is an open space just across a small side street from the hotel, and it has a food court on the ground level. We found several places where we could get something for breakfast, and Carl got a feta and egg wrap, and I got a ham and cheese "toastie".

The hotel is right at the square making it very convenient, and there is seating outdoors or inside the food court.

We walked down Pitt Street as it appeared to be a straight path to the Overseas Cruise Terminal.

We had wondered about the former name of our hotel, Tank Stream. It seemed that it was formerly an office building that was converted into a hotel in 2017. (https://www.smh.com.au/traveller/inspiration/the-tank-stream-hotel-sydney-review-centrally-located-at-a-price-that-will-please-20170620-gwumr4.html and https://eatdrinkandbekerry.net/index.php/2018/03/10/uncovering-sydneys-dirty-secrets-from-tank-stream-hotel/) 

As we were walking toward the harbour, we came to a construction area that is refurbishing the Tank Stream Stormwater drain.

Interesting that we would have come across this name again! But I guess it has quite a storied history in Sydney (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Stream).

We continued on to the Harbour and saw the Sydney Opera House across Circular Quay. Just to the left you can see the front of a cruise ship that was docked at the Overseas Cruise Terminal when we were there.

We saw a sculpture outside the Museum of Contemporary Art that reminded us of "the bean" in Chicago.

Ovation of the Seas -- a Royal Caribbean ship. The couple that we were talking with had just completed a cruise around New Zealand and disembarked that morning. They live further north in Australia.

A selfie with the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the background

Watersedge at Campbell's Stores in The Rocks

The ASN Company building, aka The Castle

A view of a small "tall" ship contrasted with the huge Ovation of the Seas

Sydney Opera house across Circular Quay from The Rocks

Sydney Harbour Bridge

See those people up on the upper structure of the bridge? You can book an "excursion" to walk over the top of Sydney Harbour Bridge -- it costs $192/person -- uhm, maybe not!

"Still Life with Stone and Car" Uhm... okay? (https://www.timeout.com/sydney/art/still-life-with-stone-car)

Buildings along the Harbour in Barangaroo

Mov'in Bed Outdoor Bed Cinema ()https://movinbed.com/sydney/

You can watch a movie on a bed in the sand? A$89 for two (so about US$60). We decided we could give this a pass too!

The small convenience stores are great to pick up a cold drink or snack!

Carl with a sculpture on Australia Square upper plaza

Information about the sculpture

We went back to the Australia Square food court for lunch -- Carl got Vietnamese Pho and I got a Doner Kebab (doner is beef in Australian Greek food I guess).

We headed back to our hotel room and rested for a while. We went out for a little while in the evening, looking for a place that might have music, but everything we found was super busy, so we stopped at one of the small convenience stores and got sandwiches, chips, and a drink and ate in our room! Still working on getting beyond jet lag!