Day 05 - Sydney Opera House and Fish Market

Location: Sydney
Weather: Partly cloudy and warm
We slept in late this morning until around 10:00 AM and then took public transport to the Sydney Opera House to take a quick tour. It’s beautiful outside! We met the guide in the lobby of this huge structure! Everyone says that the architecture is based on sails in “mid-billow” in the wind, but I have to say that I still don’t see it! Call me crazy! I never realized that the opera house is actually three separate structures. It was funded publicly and through an international lottery system.
While we were in the HUGE main concert hall (sorry, pictures weren’t allowed) a tourist came in and started snapping pictures! The tour guide threw a fit and charged the man down (which was quite humorous because the tour guide looked like a self proclaimed “galloping granny”), and forced him to delete each picture of the inside hall.
The acoustics were very wet and there was a 2.7 second echo to every sound. The seats in the concert hall were specially made to absorb sound similar to the way human bodies in the seats absorb sound for a consistent sound. The inner structures of each of the three buildings were entirely within the outer, visible structures.
By the time the tour was over, we didn’t have enough time to go to the beach. :( Looking back, we shouldn’t have slept in as late as we did. So, we headed back to the hotel, changed out of our bathing suits, showered up, and left to go to the fish market. It was a nice little district where they sell fish (duh :) ). Many of the stores were closed because of New Years, but the seagulls didn’t know that! (“Mine? Mine?”).
We ate a sample platter of fried fish and it was amazing. Very fresh! I wish we didn’t eat thatmuch, though, because there was other things to try like sashimi and sushi.
After our fried fish binge, we got some ice cream and sat near the wharf.






We saw a few pelicans feeding on some of the fishy leftovers.
We walked around some more of the other stores and went into a place where they were selling fresh fish. We saw some fresh lobster in a tank in the back, so we thought we would take a look at their struggle for survival. We walked back just in time. Someone had chosen a lobster! The man at the tank reached in his net, grabbed one, pulled him out of the water .. but as he did, the lobster fought for its life and splashed lobster tank water all over us! It got on my face and shirt and in Hilary’s hair and ice cream cone! We decided it was best to get rid of the ice cream cone at that point.
We had dinner reservations at Doyle’s on the beach at Watson’s Bay, so we wiped the lobster tank water off our face, took a bus and ferry ride and made our way to Watson’s Bay. It was Gorgeous! (Pronounce like the crocodile hunter).
There was a large open park (where they didn’t allow dogs. Can you tell who planned this trip? :) )
The park overlooked downtown Sydney and had breathtaking views from a cliff that we walked up.


We took many pictures here, since it was so beautiful.
After our walk, we strolled back down through the park and got seated early for dinner. We were hoping for an outdoor table, but we got one with a window that was very nice. At the beach below, some local children were running naked through the water and the beach.
The meal was incredible! We had a Paella but it was fish in a type of tomato & herb sauce. It had octopus, crab, muscles, and loads of calamari with rice on the side.
We watched the sun set on Sydney from our table. Overall, it was a wonderful, relaxing evening. Then, the ride home happened. Because it’s New Year’s Day, many ferries are not running after certain times. For example … ours. So we had to take a bus back to downtown Sydney. No problem! It turns out we were picked up by the knight bus from Harry Potter. We were driving fast and going around corners and starting and stopping suddenly. The plane ride over here had less turbulence. We were so exhausted (and a little nauseous) so we went right to bed. We had an early start planned for our next day’s journey to the Blue Mountains!