Touring the Harbour

Well, today we said we were going to take it easy in the morning to get ready for an eventful afternoon.  But actually, when you wake up at 6AM every morning--after about nine hours sleep--doing nothing doesn't feel like the greatest option.

So we toured our neighborhood a bit.  And by that I mean we went right out of the apartment, rather than left.  At the end of our street is a pretty steep cliff down to the ocean--with virtually nothing around.

Sydney, whether you are talking about Bondi Beach or the CBD ( Central Business District) gives San Francisco a run for its money are far as hills go.  That means that a lot of people have really good views from their homes.  And Bondi, or actually North Bondi, has some gorgeous homes.  Here are just a few about two blocks from where we are staying.

We headed for the beach, thinking we would relax there for a bit. There were a lot fewer people on the beach this morning than we have seen other mornings.  We think it might be because the surf was not very good.  The water was pretty calm.

We had a little breakfast at a cafe near the beach and then took the bus to the Circular Quay.  Our plan was to go to the tourist office and see which was the best dinner cruise to take.  We also wanted to do the bridge climb.

On our way we noticed yet another huge cruise ship hogging all the space in the harbour.

These boats are bigger than the Opera House.  As you might be able to see from this picture, a lot of people were carrying their bags to the boat, giving us some hope that it would be gone soon.

We talked to a very nice lady at the visitors bureau who told us that doing both the climb and the dinner cruise in the same day might be too much.  So we decided to do the dinner cruise right away and the climb the next day.  Which, we realized later, gave us a full 24 hours to wonder what the heck we were thinking.

And this is the reason.  Here is the bridge

And here are the people climbing on the bridge

Just a little bit scary :)

So, with time to kill before our dinner cruise, I really wanted to get on the water.  We did not know what was on the other side of the harbour except Manly, which we were saving for later, so we took the ferry to the Toronga Zoo.  But we really did not want to go to another zoo.  We got off the ferry and there, waiting for us, was a bus going to Balmoral Beach.  I had a vague positive recollection of that name from one of the tourist books, so we got on the bus.  It took us through some really lovely neighborhoods to a beach that was really nice, with a couple of cafes on the beachfront.

We continued to be hampered in our eating choices by our dislike of seafood.  For instance, here is the menu for the cafe in Balmoral.

Click to see a larger version.

Anyway, we ended up ordering the children's menu of chicken nuggets at this take-out place near the beach.  We really did not want to ruin our dinner.

We took the bus and the ferry back to the Circular Quay, and then another ferry to the Darling Harbour, where we were taking the dinner cruise.  There are so many sights in the harbour, including the Opera House, which Meredith and I are both very impressed with.

And this very weird entrance to an amusement park called Luna Park

The dinner cruise took us to about the same places as the ferry, so that was disappointing.  On the other hand, we did get a chance to see everything with a glass of wine in our hands.

And we were able to say good-bye to that huge cruise ship.

The dinner cruise was like taking a trip to China.  We were perhaps two of eight people who spoke English as their first language.  We find that Sydney is a lot more Asian than we thought it would be.  But it makes a lot of sense.  This is where you can come in a lot shorter time than Europe or the USA if you are from the Far East.

We went home and got there about 8:00PM, which forced us to actually stay up that late.  In fact we stayed up until all of 8:30.  Good on us.