Day 6 - Sydney, Australia
Sydney, Australia
Most people who know us know that we are not the touristy type and usually avoid anything that involves bus loads of asians and lots of crowds with flashing cameras but hey its Australia and exceptions need to be made. So today we hit the Sydney's city centre. Matt was up before Denise this morning and like a good husband had coffee made and ready to be poured. Once Denise smelt the brewing coffee at 0700hrs, she was up and coffee was enjoyed on the porch again. We skipped out on breakfast as we were still full from our big seafood meal in Wollongong. A picture of the meal has been posted so everyone can get a good idea of the size of it (see day 5). We were up, motivated and out the door by 0900hrs. Driving in Australia is nothing we have ever experienced before. Everyone and we mean everyone drives the speed limit. More then likely its because the highways are littered with speed measuring cameras. In a 15 minute drive you honestly pass approx. 30 speed cameras and some are even while going down a hill... thats just not fair. It will be interesting to see if we get any speeding tickets in the mail. Regardless, when the GPS says 45 minutes to your destination... its 45 minutes. So just before 10, with only two u-turns this time, we found parking down town and started walking. Even though Australia has a population over 4 million people, walking the streets is easy as they are not crowded, which makes for a much more enjoyable walk and allows you to take it all in. Australians continue to be the happiest people in the world! We can't really blame them, gorgeous weather all the time and a beautiful country. We found ourselves in Darling Harbour to start. No surprise there since we usually gravitate to the water. Darling Harbour is the second largest port in Sydney and it has beautiful private boats which we admired with envy. Darling Harbour also has an aquarium and a zoo! Since we don't really want to see the sharks in the ocean nor kangaroos on the highways we decided to see them up close and personal in a non-life threatening environment. The Aquarium was pretty awesome. It had two large enclosed walkways under two large shark and stingray pools. We got some pretty awesome pics. We grimaced and had to chuckle a bit at the stingrays as we were thinking of poor Aimee who almost had her achilles taken off by one in Nicaragua but is recovering with Nicaragua rum. When we left he aquarium it was time for lunch. Since the Harbour reminded us of Sha Sha resort we decided to hit up the patio at the Hard Rock Cafe. We knew from Rome that the Hard Rock Cafe makes awesome Long Island Ice Teas. We crushed them with a wicked BBQ lunch. From there we headed to the Zoo. We saw Koala's, Kangaroos. and a huge alligator which would put all gators on Swap people to shame. Once we left the Zoo we hit up a water taxi to "The Rocks", which was originally the convicts old barracks during the first settlements which are now converted into restaurants and museums. The Rocks are also in Sydney Cove which also holds the famous Sydney Opera House. Our water taxi ride over was awesome. We were the only ones on the taxi and got some one-on-one time with "grubber" our driver. Grubber filled us in on Politics and how construction in the area really worked. We crossed under the Sydney Harbour bridge and got a pretty good perspective of how big the bridge truly is. Once Grubber dropped us off at the The Rocks we continued our walk towards the Opera House. Since it was close to 40 degrees again, we stopped for ice cream and sat in the shade. It helped cool us down but it was still hot! Thank god for the breeze off the water otherwise it would be unbearable. The Sydney Cove is filled with street entertainers ranging from musicians playing to aboriginals painted up with traditional dancing attire and tapping two sticks together. It made us think of the aboriginals at home..... we will just leave it at that. The Sydney Opera House is an architects dream but since neither of us are really into that we headed to the point of the Opera House and took in the view. From the Opera House you can see Fort Denison, which from our understanding was similar to Alcatraz but much smaller in size. Fort Denison is famous for hanging murderers in chains in the court and leaving their bodies to rot for years as warnings to others. We left the Opera House and made our way to the Sky Tower. The Sky Tower is similar to the CN tower. We anticipated great pictures and a wicked view from the top. BUT... without either of us thinking, we entered a national landmark with one of us carrying a knife and unlike the Eiffel Tower in France we were not losing a knife....again. Especially, since this knife was personalized from our wedding. Soooo.... we made plans to return at a later date.... without a weapon. lol! Now being close to 1700hrs, we were done with the city and headed home. Getting home was way easier then getting to the city. We are getting the hang of this driving business! Once home, we made drinks and hit the Pool. The pool was exactly what we needed, cooled us right down and took the city off our skin. Drinks and relaxation didn't hurt either. Drinks continued, which led to appetizers, and dinner. While making dinner, Ron called the house and invited us out for a day on his boat tomorrow. Sold! A day on the lake is our perfect day. Tomorrow we hit the lake!. Cheers Mate!