March 6th - Sydney Australia Day 2

We had a mostly beautiful day in Sydney just some sprinkles and some clouds here and there.  Tonight, it’s cloudy but it still made for a nice picture of the downtown area with the QM2 in view.

Lucky cruise ships get to dock at the Overseas Passenger Terminal in Sydney, usually when they are taking on or letting off passengers and we had our day today.  It’s a fantastic location near the ferry, public transportation and all the shopping and restaurants you could want.

Today we took one of the ferries to Watson’s Bay, near the mouth of Sydney harbor.  We used our ‘Opal’ transportation card.  I made a mistake yesterday and referred to it as the ‘opera’ card…it’s not opera it’s opal.  It makes sense since Sydney is like the opal capital of the world.  They are opal shops everywhere…but they’re not any cheaper here.

We walked more or less along a cliff walk from Watson’s Bay to Bondi Beach.  It was about 3.6 miles but it took us longer then it normally would because we were stopping for all the fabulous views.  Also, we ran into a lot of people walking their dogs and that usually turned into a nice conversation while we got some petting in.  Here's a picture of the Opera House as we left the ferry wharf near downtown Sydney.

This is a map of our approximate route today.  Google Maps takes you on streets of course not the cliff walks but this is close enough.  The blue ‘F’ you see is where our ship is docked.

The scenes along the cliff were beautiful.

We also stumbled on possibly the best view of Sydney from afar!

Finally, we reached Bondi Beach.  We were here before but really didn’t get down to the beach area.  It’s a beautiful Friday so of course there were a lot of people.  Out of view of this picture the surf was up.  We saw a lot of surfers both in and out of the water.

After having lunch, we took a bus back to Circular Quay using our Opal card.  We initially put $20 on the card and after two ferry rides and one bus ride we had about $4 left so we thought we did pretty well.  I’ll probably keep them for our next visit to Sydney…if there is one.

We went back to the ship to rest for awhile before going out and enjoying some of the area at night.  As you can imagine this area is jumping, lots of restaurants and things to do including of course the Opera House itself.  I got this picture of folks doing the nighttime Sydney Harbor Bridge walk, I zoomed in pretty close but believe me they were way up there.

Across from this beautiful location is the creepiest amusement park you can imagine.  It’s called Luna Park.

As usual we loved our visit here and will miss it.  Tomorrow we have a sea day and then we’re in Melbourne for a day.  We’re hoping the good weather continues.