Stellar Day In Sydney

 

Thought I'd share a little of the sail in with you.  We could see the cliffs from quite a ways out, here's the entrance to the harbor with an area called Manley there on the right.

This isn't a part of Australia known for long stretches of sandy beaches, most of what we saw was more rugged coastline, although there is the famous Bondi Beach nearby which we didn't have time to get out to.

There are stretches of green space along the shores in greater Sydney, lots of trees.  The area where the zoo is located on the harbor looks a lot like this spot.

I liked the looks of this area, houses up in the woodsy spaces and boats out in the small bay for sailing, a lovely community.

The harbor entrance twists and turns before you get to the recognizable parts of Sydney.  We started to begin the see the sprawl as we approached the last turn.

And there it was, Sydney in all of its glory, boats hurrying here and there, skyscrapers and well known sights.

This panorama shot turned out to be a pretty good one, complete with the opera house, bridge and even one of the multitude of ferries that traverse the harbor.

We had a great view of the bridge from where Serenade anchored out in the harbor.  We had several friends who made the climb while we were there but we opted for other activities instead.

The Sydney Opera House is probably one of the most recognizable buildings in the world, and definitely the most well known in Australia.  We were looking forward to heading there for a tour later in the day.

Our first picture in Sydney was in front of the Opera House.  There was another cruise ship at the International Terminal when we arrived so after anchoring in the harbor we caught the first tender to the dock near where we took this picture. 

It was pretty cool to finally be at a place we'd only seen from the air when we had flown into Sydney years ago on our way to Melbourne.  Karl thought this view made the opera house sail look like a conquistador helmet.  

It takes a long time to drive anywhere near Sydney so the best way to get around is by ferry and they are zipping all over the harbor.  The green and yellow ones are the public ferries, then there are smaller ones that are private companies.  We had booked a combo ticket with a company called Fantasea for the ferry and the Taronga Zoo.  We had hoped to have time to explore the harbor a bit on the ferry but with all we had planned there wasn't time for more than taking it to the zoo and back.  In hindsight we probably should have just done a public ferry and a zoo ticket separately but live and learn.  These were views of the bridge and Luna Park with its ferris wheel and other rides right there on the harbor.

After having tendering across the harbor we came right back past Serenade to get to the zoo.

On a tip from one of our Aussie friends we knew we should take the bus up the hill to the upper zoo entrance so that A) we wouldn't have to climb uphill all day, B) going downhill we were headed in the direction of the ferry.  I loved this beautiful old entrance to Taronga Zoo, which opened in 1916.

There are two animals that everyone wants to see when they come to Australia so it's no surprise that the first thing we went to see was one of them, the koalas.

It was a warm day and none of the koalas we saw were very active, I don't think we saw even a head nod from from any of them.

This one on the left was the most awake of any that we saw.  I kept wondering how the one on the right didn't fall off the branch.  

We had to go find what Aubrey had just announced a day or two before was her spirit animal, the Capybaras.

These rodents weren't very active either until we got to watch someone have an "experience" with them to feed them, then they were up and moving to eat a few leaves.  Aside story here, when we got back to the ship I told Damain, our room steward, that I'd send him photos of animals from the zoo to send to his girls, ages 7 and 5.  As I listed off what I had that was unique to me, I mentioned the capybara.  "Oh," says Damain, "We have those in Guyana, we eat them all the time, in curry, roasted, they taste like beef."  Well okay, I definitely learned something new!

The location of the zoo is lovely, you get views of the downtown area of Sydney throughout it.

I saw this lizard, hard to pick out in the leaves with its excellent camouflage, and immediately thought of Kara, my reptile loving girl.

We are hoping to see some of these guys in the wild when we get to Madagascar in a couple of months but until then it was fun to see them here.

The lemurs can move quickly through the trees and along these wood walkways.  These are Ring-tailed Lemurs who are known to be very social creatures.  They normally eat fruit, leaves, flowers, bark and sap but may dine on the occasional chameleon as well.

The first of a couple of tree trunks in this post.  These are called Wollemi Pines.  They are an ancient tree that belongs to a botanical family that was common when the dinosaurs were on the earth, and are an endangered species.

Bright as these Lorikeets are it took a couple of looks to pick them out on the wall here.  You can see just a hint of the vibrant red-orange that lines the underside of their wings in the photo on the right.

Such beautiful little birds!

Wish I could tell you if these were wallabys or. kangaroos.  I think they may be the former, but they definitely were climbers.

One more tree trunk, just so unique and lovely.

I'm not sure what this bird was either, it was hard to get a good photo through the mesh, but the tail was so unique...

...that I had to get a closeup, oh so longl

Another beautiful bird in the aviary.

The garden clock kept good time and had both iconic Australian animals, kangaroo and koala.

And speaking of koalas, we got to see a few more a bit later on.  There were several that were part of another "experience" where you could hold them for a fee.  We'll be doing that in Brisbane so stay tuned!

A few more wallabys were in another open area, these we got to see hop around just a little.

I appreciated this one posing for me!

I hadn't realized how shimmery an emu's head could look.

One more wallaby.

The Australian white ibis can be found all around Sydney harbor.  We saw them not only at the zoo but wandering the green space around an area called The Rocks as well.

These Star Tortoises have such interesting shells.  Their shell pattern is good camouflage in the tropical forests or dry savannas where they live since they resemble the grass tussocks they like to lie under.

You can tell these are older creatures as the young don't have the striking pattern, it develops as they age.

Another great view of the city from the zebra and giraffe enclosure.

Just a couple of gorillas sitting around.

Hakuna Matata!  Here's a little meerkat on alert that made me immediately think of the Lion King musical.  

Giraffes!

You just have to love watching these awkward, lovely animals.

A little zoo art.  These were the only rhinos that we saw that day.

Lunchtime!  We went to a food court where you just picked out what you wanted and took it to the cashier.  I opted for a roast beef sandwich, some salt and vinegar chips, a raspberry flavored mineral water, and a Mars bar.  Probably not the healthiest but it looks colorful, and it was tasty.  I haven't had a cold sandwich in months.

Just one elephant picture.  This one was throwing dust on its back to keep from getting sunburned.

Two Aldabra Giant Tortoises.  These may live to over 150 years old and can weigh up to 550 pounds.  They live on land on islands in the Indian Ocean, where in years past they were hunted for their meat and oil.

Isn't this bird a beauty?!  As best I can tell it's called a Superb Fruit Dove, much more colorful than the doves that love the roof at our house.

A pygmy hippo there on the left and a baby one on the right, if you can spot it.

Not a very good picture of a Red Panda but it's the best I was able to get.

A Sea Lion isn't exactly exotic but I just like the colors in this photo.

All in all we had a great day at the zoo exploring with Bob and Laura before catching the ferry back to the city to start our next part of the day while they continued exploring via the ferry.

And it was back to the Sydney Opera House again for a tour, dinner, and then an opportunity to actually see an opera, Mozart's "The Magic Flute", at this beautiful building.

Our tour of the opera house was super informative.  I loved all the different colors and textures within the structure.  The story of its construction was described by our guide Zoe as dramatic, long and confusing.

I'm just going to share a whole lot of visuals here and then throw some history in along with them.  First thing that I hadn't realized about the building was that it is multi-purpose, not just for opera.  The opera/ballet theater is the smaller of two main spaces and can seat about 1500 people.  We weren't able to take pictures in either hall due to staff being on stage and privacy laws.  The concert hall has bright pink seats, along with the same shade of pink ceiling disks above the performance area that are there to help distribute the sound properly.  It's a stunning hall visually and can seat 2500.  There are also smaller spaces for other performances.

So a little history of the Sydney Opera House.  It was decided in the early 1950's that the city was in need of a performing arts venue.  The site of Bennelong Point was designated as the location in 1956, which was appropriate as this spot had always been a place of song and dance, long before the Europeans arrived.  A competition to design the building was opened that year and in 1957 a design by Danish architect Jørn Uzon was chosen.  While everyone loved the design it took Uzon some time to be able to figure out how to actually make it work.  After time and cost overruns the governing bodies decided they weren't going to pay Uzon, forcing him to leave the project unfinished and with very hard feelings toward the Australian government.

An Australian named Peter Hall was then hired to complete the project which took a total of 16 years to finish, and ended up costing just as much as if Uzon had been allowed to complete his incredible design.  The Sydney Opera House was finally opened by Queen Elizabeth on October 20, 1973.  Uzon never came back to Australia to see the structure in its finished form, a sad part of the opera house story.  On a positive note, Jørn Uzon was finally invited back to Sydney in 1999 to see his amazing building and to help make a plan for it going forward.  He agreed to the trip but unfortunately became too ill to make it.  Instead, his children, who had followed in his footsteps, came to Australia and helped create a document with design principles for the Sydney Opera House that are still followed today.

Most of the wood throughout the building is this type called Brushbox, an Australian hardwood.

There are millions of individual tiles that create the "sails" of the iconic roof.  These were imported from Sweden and 97% of them are still the originals, even 50 years later.  You can see from the photo on the right that there are two colors of tiles.  They couldn't use all white tiles because the effect would have been blinding, having the two colors offsets as one reflects and the other does not.  The tiles are nicknamed "snow" and "ice".

One interesting thing about the tiles is that they are self-cleaning, the only way they are cleaned is when it rains.  They are checked every five years to look for any tiles that may have become cracked, or defective in any other way, but obviously they don't need replacing very often.

All the different lines crisscrossing through the interior, along with all the colors and textures are just so incredibly beautiful.

We were going to watch "The Magic Flute" in the Joan Sutherland Theatre, named for Australia's greatest soprano.  This small stage is used for both opera and ballet.  The roof of that particular theater is patterned after the shape of the roof of your mouth, it works really well for the acoustics.  The other incredible thing about the sound in that theater is that for opera, none of the singers uses a microphone, all the sound you hear is what they project themselves.  We were literally four rows from the upper back of the theater and could hear the performance perfectly, yet another tribute to the designers.  I thoroughly enjoyed "The Magic Flute", which was done in English and translated to give it a more modern feel.  The singers were marvelous as well, and I just kept thinking to myself, "I'm sitting here watching an opera in the Sydney Opera House!"  What a treat!

After our tour and as part of our ticket we had dinner there on the west side of the opera house before attending the opera.  It was lovely to eat outside but the sun was setting and as you can see I had to wear my sunglasses in order to eat my meal.

Can't tell you what this mocktail was called that Karl and I both had but it was citrusy and refreshing, and you can see Serenade in the background.  She had moved to the dock in the afternoon which made it much easier for us to get back to the ship that night.

So Karl tried some braised wallaby for dinner.  I just couldn't make myself order it but I did try a bite.  It was delicious, kind of like lamb but also kind of like a pot roast.  I had chicken myself and this MOST delicious pavlova for dessert with berries and plums on the top.  Pavlovas are an Australian specialty, something I didn't know until recently.

While we ate we watched some of the Sydney Bridge climbers.  We were wondering if there was anyone we knew up there but they were much too far away for us to be able to tell.

I know, Christmas card photo here!  It was a lovely evening as we came out after the opera and the Circular Quay (make sure you pronounce that "key" or the Aussies [Ozzies] won't know what you mean), was a bustling place.

The amusement park looked like lots of fun all lit up at night.

As did the harbor and the bridge.

Here was our final view of Sydney taken while standing out on our balcony on Serenade.  It was a gloriously fitting end to a marvelous day.