| On to Sydney. A great city that reminded us of San Diego in many ways. Of course, we do have a nice bridge but no famed opera house. |
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| The famous bridge. Yes, there are people there on the left side arch. You can (for a large fee) climb the bridge. |
The even more famous opera house. We took tons of pictures of it--enough to fill a separate album. |
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| The night view was spectacular. We have heard that more people can identify the Sydney Opera House than any other single building in the world. |
We took an early morning backstage tour of the opera house. Chuck found this interesting. The drums are below the main level in order to allow the rest of the orchestra to hear themselves, so the percussionists need a television monitor to see the conductor. |
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| The Opera House actually has several performance spaces ranging from very large to an intimate theater in the round where experimental plays are performed. |
Various solutions are needed in different venues to provide the right acoustics for each type of performance. These disks reflect sound back into the large theater. |
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| One theater has a large pipe organ. |
This is in the star's dressing room. Chuck does not play but he could pretend. Pat does play but didn't have the nerve to actually play anything on this piano. |
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| Although much of the mechanics of the Opera House are automated, there are still some manual controls, like this one to raise and lower the trapdoor on one of the stages. |
Needless to say, extreme caution needs to be exercised when using it. |
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| One of the small performance spaces set up for a music program for children. |
A non-musical theater space, set up, apparently, for an avant-garde performance of some type. Our guide, seen here, was an old denizen of the theater and had lots of stories to tell about the stars who had performed there as well as the history of House. |
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| View from the Quay, which was a block from our hotel. The Quay was lined with shops and restaurants and reminded us of the Gaslamp Quarter. |
We took a harbour cruise (it reminded us of SD) and ran into this guy (not literally). |
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| There was a brisk wind blowing so it was great sailing weather. |
No piloting and texting! But at this point we were stopped and he was trying to get hold of his replacement--it was end of shift for him. |
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| View from the boat - you never get enough pictures of it. |
We thought this was cute. It is the Maritime Museum. |
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| One day we bought our lunch here. |
An excursion into the Blue Mountains began here. |
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| Where we each got to pet a koala. |
Unlike Pandas (which we petted on our China trip), the fur is very soft. |
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| Not all the animals at the Park are Australian natives; they have a large collection of exotic birds as well. |
The kangaroos were very friendly, especially if you fed them. |
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| These Little Blue Penguins (yes, that is their name) were the same as the ones we saw at the Penguin Parade in Melbourne but we were not allowed to take pictures there. |
The Blue Mountains themselves were a disappointment as most of it was like this. |
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| This is the famous Three Sisters formation. Honestly, it is! |
So instead we went to another show and museum and store for the aborigines (and run by them). You could have your pick of didgeridoos. |
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| One of the show participants and some non-natives. |
The weather did not get better after the show. |
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| We visited a garden, which was pleasant and colorful despite the rain.. |
Australians must love fireworks. Almost every night over the Harbor there was a show. |