Today we
arrived in Sydney, sort of. We are at
anchor near the Taranga Zoo on the other side of the harbor from the famous opera
house. (Another ship has the good dock
near the Opera House.) As a result, we
had to tender into the city. As before, Cunard
hired some much bigger boats to move people ashore quicker. We were on the big ones going both ways to and
from the city. The boats let you off at
the ‘Man O’War Steps’ adjacent to the opera house. It’s a good location.
Lucky for us
we’ve been here before because today was a lousy weather day. It was raining throughout the day and then in
the afternoon the wind came up and it really got bad. Good news though it was not hot for the first
time in many many days! Because of the
rain we decided to go up George Street to the Queen Victoria Building. This is a beautiful old building they’ve
repurposed as a high-end shopping mall. The
shops are all expensive and some are downright quirky. We had lunch across from a store that sold
expensive quill sets for writing (that must really be a niche market). Here are
some pictures of the interior.
We had lunch
here and you can see from the picture above the dining spots are situated by
the open atrium so you are sitting out in the shopping area. While sitting there I saw two guys coming our
way and one of them had a Red Sox shirt and Patriots windbreaker on. When he walked by, I said ‘I guess we know where
you’re from’. The two of them stopped to
talk. They were brothers, both
originally from Connecticut but now one lives in Tasmania and the other in
Virginia. Tasmania is part of Australia,
it’s an island south of Melbourne.
As we were talking,
they asked where we were from and we said New Hampshire. The guy who lives in Virginia said, ‘oh that’s
funny I went to college there, in Henniker’!
Unbelievable! We live in this
tiny town in the middle of NH and we run into someone who went to college there…in
Sydney Australia. Small world.
After lunch
we walked over to Darling Harbor, this is an area developed in the last 10-15
years. We hadn’t been there before. The pictures below show you the area and also
the bad weather. In addition to
pedestrian walkways they had a maritime museum (that we visited), an aquarium
and some other tourist areas. It was a very
nice area with many condos and hotels right on the water.
After coming
out of the museum the wind had picked up so we decided to take a ferry back to the
opera house area, call Circular Quay (quay pronounced key). Sydney has an extensive ferry system used by
commuters and tourists alike. All in all,
the city, like all others we’ve been to in Australia has excellent public
transportation.
Tomorrow we
plan to take a ferry over to Watson’s Bay, near the mouth of Sydney Harbor, to
do some exploring. To prepare for that
we bought an ‘Opera’ card this morning. This
card allows you to take any transportation in Sydney. You simply tap the kiosk when entering and tap
again when you’re leaving. Since we had
the cards it was easy to use the ferry.
This is the ferry we took. It may
have had a novice driver because every dock we stopped at seemed more like a
controlled collision…but we made it okay.
In other
news, I mentioned before that the Holland America world cruise had changed
their itinerary and had planned to go to Sri Lanka and India. I thought India was crazy because of how difficult
it is to get a visa…well it seems like they found that out and now India is
cancelled and Sri Lanka won’t let cruise ships in any more (we were there in
February). Instead they are going to be
spending more time in Australia! What a
coincidence!
Tomorrow is
supposed to be better weather and we will also be docked right next to the
opera house and Circular Quay. Hurray no
tendering!
No comments:
Post a Comment