Feb
18
2009

Circular Quay

PhotosWednesday, February 18, 2009 - 09:28:51 pm
(Posted Under: Travel)
It was nice waking up today knowing that we didn't have do anything other than check out the sights of Sydney. Previous to last night we'd planned to spend today at Torronga Zoo, but given everything, we decided we'd check out the Harbor Bridge and Opera House instead.

We started out going south on George, with the intention of checking out the hotel where I stayed the last time I was in Sydney. It was by all a fruitless effort, wandering around Thomas Street (ironically we walked by the back of it). While we'd walked incredible amounts since Saturday, we decided and agreed without much effort that we were going to take the train to Circular Quay today, especially given the size of the blisters on my feet last night. So it wasn't that difficult to abandon our search and head over to Central Station. Weather wise, the day had started out as horrible as yesterday, and on arrival at Circular Quay there was a down pour. Which last about 10 minutes, before blowing over and revealing blue skies - which we hoped we were going to have for the rest of the day - and thankfully did.

Photobox ImageLast night I'd tried to spot the Harbor Bridge from Darling Harbor, which wasn't at all possible, however today, we had the bridge to the left, and Opera House to the right - no shortage of sights. We first headed over to the Opera House. It was interesting seeing the entrance to the Botanical Gardens and that we were actually fairly close (more so than I realized anyway) on our walk to the hotel yesterday. It was also interesting looking out towards Potts Point and the naval base and seeing how the first hotel wasn't that far away. We spent a reasonable amount of time looking around and taking photos - including one of Katie making our with her new lover - the Sydney Opera House. In honor of the story on Rove about the weirdo who married the Effel Tower. [smile] Hilarious!

Photobox ImageWe then headed over to the other side for a closer view of the bridge. As previously mentioned, on the plane at at the top of Sydney Tower I thought the bridge looked a lot smaller than I had imagined. Down here at Circular Quay however it looked a lot more like what I'd expected.

Throughout the day I'd wanted to walk across the bridge, but it seemed like the day was disappearing fairly quickly, so it was questionable about whether it'd actually be possible. Though, with still a few hours before our flight, we went on a search for an entrance to get onto the bridge. By all accounts, initially it didn't seem like you could without walking all the way back to the Cahill Express Way, which I didn't think we had either the time, nor the constitution for. All the same, we starting walking back, following the bridge along Lower Fort Street. Either way, I really enjoyed how everything looked around there, which was a contrast to the inner city, which I struggled to enjoy all that much yesterday.

Photobox ImageAs we continued on, we hit an entrance to the bridge. Although it was getting later in the day, I absolutely wanted to at least go up there. Once up there, the quest turned from just that, to walking across there. I grabbed Katie's bag, which she'd been carrying almost all, and off we went. I took some sort of pride in carrying that Crumpler bag, that was loading with 5kg of paperwork for the last time, across the Sydney Harbor Bridge. The views, particularly of the Opera House were great from the bridge, and made for some great photos.

Once on the other side, which was more suburban we took a bit of rest, before deciding to walk down to the water and Sydney's Luna Park. It's something that we talked about doing initially a week or so ago, but I really didn't think we'd get to it today. But alas, we did, which was really cool, especially since we can now say we've stepped inside both Luna Parks. By the time we were ready to go, it was obvious we should start making our way to the airport. Once we got over the bridge, I really wanted to walk back over it (with the 5kg of paperwork [wink] ), but there certainly wasn't time for that. Which was fine, I was quite impressed and somewhat surprised that we'd actually managed to squeeze in everything that we did today! We went down to the pier to catch a ferry back, but since they didn't go direct across the quay, we opted for walking back to the Milson's Point train station, and catching a train back over the Harbor Bridge, and on to the airport.

On entering the airport from the station, I got a huge sense that I'd been there just yesterday. And whatdoyaknow, it's because we were there yesterday! [smile] We checked in, and sat around for a bit at the domestic check in counters, which was pretty cool - the windows behind the counters at Sydney, with a purply dusk coming over the sky. Having some downtime we both noticed that we'd gotten somewhat burnt today, which was funny given that we'd been fine in Queensland. After applying some water to our red skin, we moved inside the departure section of the terminal, in search of a Sydney gel cube, to complete the collection for places we've been, and have thus far been unsuccessful in finding. Sydney Airport wasn't that much more helpful, and I had to settle for a gel filled ruler instead, like what we saw on our quest in Queensland. After which we headed to our gate, with not too much time before we were boarding, and heading back to Melbourne.

Once at Melbourne, waiting to be picked up in the quick pick up section, I had another deja vu, of doing the exact same thing. Except, it wasn't a deja vu, we actually had been standing in the same spot just two nights earlier! [smile] At least this time all we had to worry about the next morning was getting up for work, rather than getting up at 4:30 to come back to the airport. neither the less, it did feel a little like groundhogs day.

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