[Scott] It’s another cloudy day here in Sydney, but at least it hasn’t really rained at all. I rode the stationary bike in the morning in the hotel workout room. We took the ferry to Manly Beach. We decided this would be a good way to see the harbour instead of paying a lot more for the cruise. I think it was about a half hour ferry ride from Circular Quay to Manly – out at the end of the harbor where it meets the ocean. Sydney Harbour is really something. There were sailboats everywhere, and we even passed by a sailing race on the trip. When you arrive at the Manly Ferry terminal, you walk down a long wide walking street with shops and restaurants (like 16th St. Mall in Denver) to get to the beach. Being a Sunday, they had a busy market there and people everywhere. We had a nice lunch at a Mexican Restaurant, and sat on the second floor patio overlooking the beach. We then just followed the path up along the coast, and just enjoyed walking around. It wasn’t really much of a day for swimming with the overcast skies, and so we hadn’t even brought our suits. There were some people in the water, but not a whole lot. We strolled through the market for a bit on the way back, and had some good gelato. They had quite a selection but we figured we better limit ourselves to one flavor each. The cup size was maybe the smallest cup of ice cream ever, but it was really good. We enjoyed the ferry ride back. It got really interesting at one point when our ferry started blowing its horn repeatedly – and it was really loud. Then we realized why – we were cutting into the middle of a sailboat race cutting across our path up ahead. It’s one of these cool sailboats with 4 guys laying parallel to the water pulling on the sail and going really really fast. Then all of a sudden there was one particularly insane small sailboat out of this group coming from our right on a collision course with the front of our ferry! The ferry captain started really laying on the horn. They didn’t steer, and we didn’t either, and there ended up probably only being about 15 feet to spare. When the sailors got through, they started hollering and pumping their fists in excitement like they had just won the lottery – I guess they were just glad to be alive!
After that exciting ferry ride, we walked up to the Opera House. The schedule was such that our only chance at seeing an opera was tomorrow night (Monday), but we found out that it was all sold out except the most expensive premium seats ($280 per ticket) and we decided it was not worth that much to us. No opera this time. We wished we had set it up before we left the States. We left the Opera House and headed for the Botanic Gardens. We had a nice walk through the Gardens and then headed to the area known as The Rocks. We found a fun Irish Pub and stopped in there for a bit. They had an Irish band playing and the crowd was really getting into it. It was a fun place with lots of people dancing and stuff, and this is at 5pm on a Sunday. The Rocks Market had just let out. After leaving the pub, we walked up to Observatory Hill which is located near the Harbour Bridge. We could here an orchestra playing up on the hill as we walked up the stairs, and we thought “Wow, how lucky are we. Perfect timing!” The music stopped and when we got up to the park the small crowd of people were clapping, and the band was leaving. Turns out we actually had really bad timing. So we just sat in the park on top of the hill enjoying the nice view looking out over the harbour (yes, that is how they spell it). It was really nice being there at dusk. We headed back to our neighborhood and picked up some lamb chops and salad at a grocery store (no more conv store!). We headed back to the hotel and I cooked up the chops in our kitchenette and they actually turned out pretty good (really!).
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