Day 25 Debarking in Sydney Day 1 Land tour

Well, we've been waiting for our departure time. We got checked in for our Disney cruise with the grand girls. Cool. I had my last fancy coffee and brought breakfast back to the room for Paul, who was showering.




We found out there are 29 people in our group continuing onto the land tour.
Getting off the ship, we collected our bags and did customs. They collected our bags to go to storage, and then we were ushered to our tour bus with our overnight bag, which goes underneath, and our backpack with us. Our guide for the week is Adriana. Our first stop is the opera house for a private tour.


We learned about construction and the shows.


They can have 4 different events at the same time in different theaters.




They have even had horses go on stage, if the play or opera requires it. 600 full-time staff keep it operating. If all stages are operating, up to 9000 people can be seated, and another 9000 in an outdoor music setting.

The sails are actually 2 colors of individual tiles, designed to cut down glare. They also have a matte finish, which allows colors to be projected onto them for special events. Floors, ceilings, and seating are all wood because of wood's resonant qualities. We got our keychain. What an amazing building.
We went to Macquarie Point Park to get the iconic picture of the bridge and opera house.


I really like the fig trees, they are huge.



They have figs on them, but our guide says they are full of bugs and can't be eaten.
The next stop is world famous Bondi Park/Beach.


These birds are ibis, and they're everywhere, almost like pigeons.



Then on to our hotel.

We found out they changed our itinerary because the airline flights getting into Darwin just didn't match up with our itinerary. We would arrive in Darwin late afternoon, maybe have time to do something, but not sure, then have to fly the next day again. Really no time for much of anything.

Then we went to our hotel and the rooms weren't ready, so we checked our bags and went to the food court next door for lunch. Food was good, but the place was very loud.

Our next agenda item is meeting with leader at 4:30 to hear about our itinerary. After that, we are probably going to bed because neither of us slept well last night. Tomorrow we are going to a valley by bus. The bed is rock hard here. Even Paul thinks it is pretty hard, and that's saying something!

We decided to go for a walk and ended up near the Royal Princess and watched her leave port. It was neat to hear her play the Love Boat theme with her air horns. I ended up with 15k steps, Paul ended up with 13k. We got lost on the way back to the hotel but got assistance from 2 different people. We actually overshot coming back and walked farther than we planned. We skipped dinner.

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