Sydney

At the risk of sounding like a total travel snob, last weekend Ross and I met in Sydney for my birthday.  We have both wanted to go for a while and since we're in the right part of the world, why not?  We flew in early Thursday morning and then flew back to our respective homes on Sunday night.  We stayed at a nice AirBnb in Potts Point and walked 50 miles (yes, 5-0 according to my FitBit) around Sydney in four days.  It was great.

Sunset behind the Opera House and Harbour Bridge

After meeting at the Sydney airport, we caught the train into the city, dropped our stuff off at our AirBnb, and set off to explore.  Our first destination: the Sydney Opera House.  We walked from our AirBnb, through the Royal Botanic Garden to Mrs. Macquaries Point.  Most pictures that you've seen of the Opera House, with the Harbour Bridge in the background were probably taken from here.  Since it was around lunch on a Thursday in the middle of winter, there weren't that many tourists around but given that Sydney has ~5 million people, there were still a lot of people out running and walking on their lunch breaks.  After getting the requisite pictures from afar, we walked over to the Opera House and marveled at it up close.  It is a gorgeous building with really cool tile work.

From there we headed around Sydney Cove, through The Rocks, and up to the Harbour Bridge.  For $15 you can go up into the southeast pylon and it is well worth it for the amazing views over the harbour, Opera House, and city.

We then went to the Museum of Contemporary Art for about two hours before it closed.  From there we went back to the Opera House because there was a light show (Badu Gili Water Light) projected onto the side of the building at dusk and 7 pm (it was on every night that we were in Sydney).  It was set to music and was incredible.  Well worth sitting on cold concrete steps for.

We then wandered around the CBD (central business district, aka downtown) for a bit, had awesome Malaysian at a hole-in-the-wall place and then slowly made our way back to our AirBnb with stops by the State Library of New South Wales (open late on Thursdays and has an amazing mosaic map of Abel Tasman's journey around the South Pacific), St. Mary's Cathedral, Hyde Park (where we saw some possums!), and the Anzac Memorial.

State Library of New South Wales

On Friday we started off with stops at St. Mary's Cathedral and the Anzac Memorial.  The art and architecture of the cathedral was gorgeous and the Anzac Memorial was extremely moving.  I never fully appreciated how detrimental WWI was to the populations of New Zealand and Australia until living here (almost 40% of males aged 18-44 were enlisted or a little under 10% of the total population of Australia).

St. Mary's Cathedral

Anzac Memorial

There are more than 164,000 stars on the ceiling of the Anzac Memorial;
one for each person from New South Wales who  was enlisted in WWI.

The main event for Friday was another trip to the Opera House but this time we went inside and attended a Sydney Symphony Orchestra performance of Mozart and Haydn in the Concert Hall.  It was a Tea & Symphony event, so we were given tea or coffee and biscuits (aka cookies) prior to the concert.  It is an incredibly surreal experience to sit in the sun in the Sydney Opera House, looking out the floor to ceiling windows across the harbor at the Harbour Bridge while sipping on tea and realize that you're not imagining it all.  The concert was fabulous!  I am so glad that Ross suggested looking to see what was happening while we were in town because it never would have occurred to me.

The Concert Hall at the Opera House

After the concert we got back to our extensive walking tour of Sydney.  We stopped by Parliament House, which has been the home of the Parliament of New South Wales since 1829, making it the oldest continually operating parliament building in the world.  After passing through a metal detector, we were basically given free rein and could wander where we pleased in the building.

Legislative Library

Legislative Council

We then headed down to St. James' Church.  Built of convict-made bricks in 1819, it is Sydney's oldest church.  It  was small and homey but had a gorgeous stained glass window ('Creation Window') from the 1950s.

Creation Window

We then went back to St. Mary's Cathedral and paid the small fee ($5) to go down into the crypts.  They hadn't been open before we had to head to the Opera House for the concert and I'm so glad that we went back because they were incredible!  The crypt floor is 12,000 square feet and most of it is covered in an amazing mosaic.  Best of all, we were the only people down there for a while so we could actually see the floor in all of it's glory (and yes, I am aware of how odd that statement is).

After spending a lot longer in the crypts than we thought that we would, we went and spent the rest of the afternoon in the Art Gallery of New South Wales.  It has an amazing selection of work and an incredible Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander gallery.  There was also an exhibit of O'Keeffe's work but you had to get a ticket for that and there was more than enough in the free sections of the gallery to keep us busy.

On Saturday we decided to escape the city for a while by taking the ferry out to Manly and doing the Manly Scenic Walkway through the North Head section of Sydney Harbour National Park.  The ferry ride was great - smooth and scenic!  Manly is a cute little suburb and the scenic walkway is pretty.  It was nice to get out in nature after so many people and so much concrete.  We ended up spending most of the day out in North Head, wandering around.

View from the ferry

Sandstone cliffs and the Pacific

View toward the city from North Head

Collins Beach

Fort Denison

Once we got back to Sydney we did a quick jaunt around the Royal Botanic Garden and stopped by Government House, which is the official residence of the Governor of New South Wales.  It was closed by the time that we got there but it was worth swinging by for a peak.

Government House

Sundial in the Botanic Garden

On Sunday, we had a more laid back day (for us).  We started off in the Royal Botanic Gardens because we had missed some sections on Saturday that I had wanted to see.  After that, we headed over to the Australian Museum.  The big exhibit was about spiders so we went to that (Australia has some crazy spiders!) and then spent the rest of our day wandering around the museum.

Sydney Funnel Web (deadliest spider on Earth) at the museum

Eventually we headed back to the AirBnb, collected our stuff, and caught the train back to the airport. As much as I complained as a kid when my parents would drag my brother, sister, and I to every museum and church within a 50-mile radius when we travelled now I just have to laugh because I do the exact same thing.  It was a crazy, busy, fun weekend and, despite having incredibly sore feet for a couple days, I'd do it again in a heartbeat.