Sydney's Icons

After picking up our Indian Visas on our first full day in the city (yes, they will actually let us in), we walked down to the Opera House. Our first sight of this iconic building wasfrom right below it from the Opera House Quay. I must say that we did this backwards. A day later, we walked over the Harbor Bridge (another iconic sight), The view of the harbor, and the Opera House in particular, is fantastic. The appropriateness of the building is much more evident from afar. When seen from afar, the Opera House looks (1) more like the images projected around the world and (2) majestic, stunning, etc. Seeing it up close first, the sense of appropriateness is lost in the details of its constuction. The concrete construction, the off-white tiles on the roof, the hordes of tourists all distract from the immenseness of the building. That said, it is still an incredible sight. We snapped the same pictures that thousands of tourists have snapped before but they do not capture the actual experience. (Well, maybe not the exact same. The interior picture is from the bathroom, a sinuous, spotless affair. Definitely worth a stop, if only to wash your hands.)

From the Opera House, we walked along the waterfront through the Botanical Gardens to Mrs. Macquaries Chair. We got rained on in the gardens, but the birds were quite active making the dampness doable. This cockatoo (they are everywhere) was working quite hard at getting into the water pipe. We watched another flip upside down on a palm branch, much like a kid playing on the bars at school. Mrs. Macquarie was Governor Macquarie's wife. He was responsible for much of the early building around Sydney; he built a road out to the point and had this bench carved out of the rock for his wife who loved to sit here and look out over the harbor. The seat is not terribly comfortable but the view is still quite lovely, if vastly different than the view that she cherished.


We finished our first walking tour at Harry's Cafe de Wheels. Harry's serves Australian pies on mushy peas and some of the best hotdogs I have ever had. Joey went for the Hotdog de Wheels, piled high with mushy peas, chili, ranchero sauce, and cheese sauce. The mushy peas looked a bit like guacamole but tasted quite a bit different. It was good enough to go back a few days later for another round.

The next day we headed back into the city to check out The Rocks, walk over the Harbor Bridge, and generally tootle around downtown. We didn't do the Bridge Climb -- budgetary restrictions and out-of-shape issues -- but the views from the bridge deck were still spectacular. To get to the bridge, we walked through the Rocks, one of the older areas of Sydney, now mostly shopping, pubs, with some interesting buildings. The tale of the bridge is basically in the pictures; the views are lovely and the bridge is really, really tall.