I still haven’t figured out how to get the pictures in order, so I’ll leave it to you to figure out which is which - shouldn’t be too hard! There should be one of the Chinese Garden of Friendship, a close-up of the Sydney Opera House tiles and a lovely sign that we couldn’t resist with Bondi Beach in the background!
Now the details - The Chinese Garden of Friendship was really lovely - quite large with a huge pool in the middle with about 4 different waterfalls. Paths took you through the gardens, up “mountains” to reach the pagodas which were beautifully carved inside. Of course all the trees and flowers were quite stunning, and there are carefully spaced spaces through which you get different perspectives on the views. We had some Chinese tea - Shaimei, which translates as “old man’s eyebrows” - how could we resist! The Garden is in Darling Harbour which is also where the IMAX movie theatre is, so we dropped in for a 3D movie “Under the Sea” which was good, but the memorable event was that I lost my wallet in the theatre! It must have dropped out of my pocket when we sat down and luckily I realized what had happened before we left the building. But we had to wait through the next movie (they run every hour) to get back in to look for it. You can imagine what was going through my head as EVERYTHING (except my passport) was in the wallet - credit cards, driver’s license, Seniors card(!) etc. etc. John and I are 3 really helpful assistants went in with flashlights and high hopes - of course the theatre is huge and they kept asking me where we had been sitting, and although I had a rough idea, I couldn’t identify the exact row. However, I found it ……
Big event the next day was a hair cut! Heather will understand when I say that it had been 2 months since I had my hair cut and it was feeling terrible! It’s always a bit of a gamble when you walk in off the street, but I found a lovely girl from Bulgaria who had only been in Sydney for 4 months (yes, she had been a hairdresser before she came!) I was amazed at her English which she had none of when she arrived - and you know how much talking a woman’s hairdresser normally does! So that was a great success. To celebrate my new-found (or lost) tresses, we did a tour of the Sydney Opera House - very interesting as we got to go into some of the theatres (there are 5 or 6 venues) and saw some interesting videos on how it came into being, as well as learning about the structure. The reason for putting up the picture of the tiles is that people think that the “sails” are white, but they are actually made up of some incredible number of ceramic tiles in two colours, cream and beige, (white would apparently have been too glaring in this strong sun) and they are specially treated so that they self-clean when it rains (which it hasn’t done in quite a while - big drought problems all over Australia and fires are burning outside Sydney as I write). After lunch, I took off to climb one of the 4 Bridge pylons. John elected not to come as his knee is a bit wonky, so I left him with a chocolate milk shake and up I went. It actually wasn’t too much of a climb (I didn’t do the actual bridge climb which takes you right to the top of the bridge and costs several hundred dollars), but there were very good views from the top of the pylon, and I thought I should finish up by walking across the bridge and back, just so I could say that I had done it!
Next day took us to Bondi Beach. We thought we needed a rest day and the weather forecast was good, so we hopped on a bus and went to where all the beautiful people go (apparently!) It is actually not a very big beach, and there wasn’t much wind so no real surfing to watch, but of course there were a bevy of lovely girls which John appreciated. We really did do nothing except read, swim, snooze and eat fish and chips - good day at the beach (and now we’ve been to Bondi!)
Today we went to the ANZAC memorial (Australia/New Zealand Army Corps) which is very moving. The building houses a small museum and the memorial hall has a vaulted roof covered in stars, each one representing a New South Wales soldier who lost his/her life in war. John is always interested in war memorials given his time in the military as a youth, and he was very impressed. We walked through Hyde Park (so many English names here!) to the Opera House and I bought tickets to the Christmas Show with the Opera Australia Orchestra and Choir tomorrow. We really wanted to go to something at the Opera House, and this should put us in the Christmas spirit, especially as the program promises “all your favourites including Silent Night, O Come All Ye Faithful, Hark and Herald Angels Sing and ……. Six White Boomers (I’m SERIOUS!) Should be an interesting experience! We’re off to Adelaide for Christmas on Saturday, so not sure when I’ll be able to blog again, so hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and New Year, and we’ll think of you while we’re having the barbie on the beach!
Now the details - The Chinese Garden of Friendship was really lovely - quite large with a huge pool in the middle with about 4 different waterfalls. Paths took you through the gardens, up “mountains” to reach the pagodas which were beautifully carved inside. Of course all the trees and flowers were quite stunning, and there are carefully spaced spaces through which you get different perspectives on the views. We had some Chinese tea - Shaimei, which translates as “old man’s eyebrows” - how could we resist! The Garden is in Darling Harbour which is also where the IMAX movie theatre is, so we dropped in for a 3D movie “Under the Sea” which was good, but the memorable event was that I lost my wallet in the theatre! It must have dropped out of my pocket when we sat down and luckily I realized what had happened before we left the building. But we had to wait through the next movie (they run every hour) to get back in to look for it. You can imagine what was going through my head as EVERYTHING (except my passport) was in the wallet - credit cards, driver’s license, Seniors card(!) etc. etc. John and I are 3 really helpful assistants went in with flashlights and high hopes - of course the theatre is huge and they kept asking me where we had been sitting, and although I had a rough idea, I couldn’t identify the exact row. However, I found it ……
Big event the next day was a hair cut! Heather will understand when I say that it had been 2 months since I had my hair cut and it was feeling terrible! It’s always a bit of a gamble when you walk in off the street, but I found a lovely girl from Bulgaria who had only been in Sydney for 4 months (yes, she had been a hairdresser before she came!) I was amazed at her English which she had none of when she arrived - and you know how much talking a woman’s hairdresser normally does! So that was a great success. To celebrate my new-found (or lost) tresses, we did a tour of the Sydney Opera House - very interesting as we got to go into some of the theatres (there are 5 or 6 venues) and saw some interesting videos on how it came into being, as well as learning about the structure. The reason for putting up the picture of the tiles is that people think that the “sails” are white, but they are actually made up of some incredible number of ceramic tiles in two colours, cream and beige, (white would apparently have been too glaring in this strong sun) and they are specially treated so that they self-clean when it rains (which it hasn’t done in quite a while - big drought problems all over Australia and fires are burning outside Sydney as I write). After lunch, I took off to climb one of the 4 Bridge pylons. John elected not to come as his knee is a bit wonky, so I left him with a chocolate milk shake and up I went. It actually wasn’t too much of a climb (I didn’t do the actual bridge climb which takes you right to the top of the bridge and costs several hundred dollars), but there were very good views from the top of the pylon, and I thought I should finish up by walking across the bridge and back, just so I could say that I had done it!
Next day took us to Bondi Beach. We thought we needed a rest day and the weather forecast was good, so we hopped on a bus and went to where all the beautiful people go (apparently!) It is actually not a very big beach, and there wasn’t much wind so no real surfing to watch, but of course there were a bevy of lovely girls which John appreciated. We really did do nothing except read, swim, snooze and eat fish and chips - good day at the beach (and now we’ve been to Bondi!)
Today we went to the ANZAC memorial (Australia/New Zealand Army Corps) which is very moving. The building houses a small museum and the memorial hall has a vaulted roof covered in stars, each one representing a New South Wales soldier who lost his/her life in war. John is always interested in war memorials given his time in the military as a youth, and he was very impressed. We walked through Hyde Park (so many English names here!) to the Opera House and I bought tickets to the Christmas Show with the Opera Australia Orchestra and Choir tomorrow. We really wanted to go to something at the Opera House, and this should put us in the Christmas spirit, especially as the program promises “all your favourites including Silent Night, O Come All Ye Faithful, Hark and Herald Angels Sing and ……. Six White Boomers (I’m SERIOUS!) Should be an interesting experience! We’re off to Adelaide for Christmas on Saturday, so not sure when I’ll be able to blog again, so hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and New Year, and we’ll think of you while we’re having the barbie on the beach!
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