Lots and lots of walking today – we headed out fairly early to visit the Royal Botanical Gardens and the Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park.  It was lovely in Hyde Park – although we were there to early to visit the Memorial building. No worries – we’ll go on the way back 🙂  We saw lots of commuters using the paths in the park as shortcuts, people walking their dogs, families out for an early outing before it got hot.  And it did get hot today – 29 Celsius with 99% humidity.

We wandered our way down to the Botanical Gardens and saw the statues of Mathew Flinders and his cat at the New South Wales State Library.  I had read a story by an Australian author, Bryce Courtenay, titled Mathew Flinder’s Cat so I was happy to see that the statue really did exist.

Once we got to the Gardens, I looked for my iphone to check some geocaching information only to discover that I had left the phone back at the condo.  Hmmmm – did we really need the phone?  We decided that we did so we headed back to the condo to get it (and for me to put on clothing which was more weather appropriate).

On our way back, the Anzac Memorial was open so we stopped to pay our respects. The museum section was open too and there was a very moving tribute to the soldiers of World War 1.  There was also a new memorial (opened this year) to the Indigenous Soldiers at Hyde Park – the  standing bullets represent the soldiers who came home and the fallen ones are the soldiers who gave their lives.

Because the temperature was heating up, we decided to catch the free CBD shuttle bus that apparently stopped on Elizabeth Street and George Street.  Well, we walked almost all the way back to the Gardens and still hadn’t found the shuttle.  So much for that plan. On our last visit to Sydney, we had visited part of the Gardens so we were interested in visiting other parts today – first stop was Government House – the grounds are open for viewing from 10 to 4. Unfortunately, they didn’t invite us in for tea *s*

After we looked at Government House, we headed for Mrs. MacQuarie’s Chair to complete an earthcache.

While on our way to the chair, we saw the set for the opera Aida. It is an outdoor production in the Botanical Gardens. I have a photo but it insists on being inserted sideways into the blog!

After 5.5 hours of walking, we were getting a little warm and decided to see if we could find the free shuttle bus at the Circular Quay station. This was much easier (although I think we could have walked faster than the bus was driving) and we managed to get off only 2 blocks from the condo.

Tomorrow is our last day in Sydney and I think we have decided to do the Hop On, Hop Off bus tour.

We woke up to a beautiful sunny day and decided to go on the Captain Cook Hop On, Hop Off tour of the Sydney Harbour.  The ticket was good for 24 hours and as many stops at the locations as you wanted.  We started at Darling Harbour and our first stop was Circular Quay where we looked for a “virtual” geocache involving the Sydney Writers Walk (we had to pick a plaque and take a photo with it to claim the cache find).  After that we jumped back on a different ferry and met a very nice lady from Yorkshire, England who was in Sydney for her grandsons’ swim meet.  She took this photo for us:

There were 9 possible stops, but we didn’t want to go to the Taronga Zoo and a few of the others were not very big and there was quite a wait for the next ferry to arrive there so  we stayed on the ferry and looked at

Fort Denison, the Zoo, and Shark Island but we really wanted to go to Manly so we changed ferries at Circular Quay again and headed off to Manly. Manly Beach was quite busy as was the main walking area in town (The Corso) but it was a nice place to visit.  Somehow, we managed to miss the ferry we were going to return on so we decided to find some lunch – we found a really neat little Mexican restaurant called Guzman Y Gomez and had some freshly made tortilla chips and guacomole – it tasted just like what we got in Mexico 🙂

On the ferry, we were treated to a humourous commentary on the history and quirks of Sydney – our guide Peter was great and had everyone laughing  at his descriptions, especially of the nude beach where he told us to refrain from waving as they may wave back with other body parts.  After a wonderful day on the water (without getting a burn), we left the boat at Darling Harbour and headed back to the condo. On the way back, we came across a small used book store with something different – Blind Dates with a book –

 

And for something kind of crazy – we like to buy Hahn’s Premium Lite beer when we are in Australia. It always amuses us that there are trivia questions under the cap but today’s was the perfect one for Canadians on vacation:

We made it! And Air Canada was great – the food was maybe not so great (although it’s pretty hard for anyone to mess up my special meal of fruit plate).

We caught the 5:45 ferry from Duke Point and then took a taxi to the airport. Check in was smooth – thanks to the travel scale we had bought to check the weight before we got a surprise at the counter! We wandered the terminal for a while as we really didn’t want to sit down before we had too – 15 hours on the flight seemed like enough sitting time. Just before we were to board the plane, the staff announced that they were “light” on passengers and needed to shift some people around to the rear of the plane for take-off or they would not be able to take off – they were asking for 20 people and assured everyone that they would be able to return to their original seats once we were in the air.

It took a bit of time to sort out the temporary seating assignments but we were finally on board – it was definitely worth paying for the extra legroom seats. We probably had a least twice as much legroom as a regular seat so we brought the carryon bag down during the flight and used it as a footstool.

After a meal about an hour into the flight, we dozed for a few hours (the noise cancelling headphones worked well) and then the flight attendants woke us up for a “snack”. Strange! We managed to doze again after that, waking up when we were about 4 hours from Sydney. As I was knitting, one of the flight attendants stopped to ask me about my knitting. We got talking and when she asked where we lived, she mentioned that another one of the flight attendants had just moved to the Duncan area! Shortly after that, the flight attendant from Duncan came and talked to us –she is renting a house in Maple Bay and is loving the difference between living on the island and living in Calgary. Odd to meet someone from home when we are that far away. The flight was delayed by about an hour because of the late departure and wind but clearing customs and quarantine was quick (even though we did mark yes to having food containing grain with us) but a quick search by the canine inspector had us on our way in short order.

We got to the condo about 10:45 a.m., cleaned up and went for a walk to Darling Harbour. Lots of building going on down in the Harbour area but that doesn’t stop people from spending time there – it’s school holidays at the moment and there were lots of childcare groups and families enjoying the sunshine in the park.

There are also lots of displays in honour of Anzac Day (April 25). Poppies are displayed everywhere – we really liked this wall of poppies and so did an Australian White Ibis – who stole one of the flowers from the display (they are artificial flowers) and flew up to his nest where we watched it decide where the flower looked best (and we noticed that he already had a few other poppies in the nest already).

There were 2 young guys who were playing digeridoos and performing tribal dance demonstrations at the Harbour. We stopped to look at the CD’s they were selling and discovered that one of the guys dances in a world-reknown Aboriginal group who come to the Vancouver Folk Festival and also visit Saltspring Island.

We stopped for a light lunch (sharing an order of fish and chips) and a beer (one each – not shared) and then crossed the Pyrmont Bridge to the other side of the harbor and discovered one of Erik’s favourite restaurant chains.

On our way back to the condo, we stopped for some groceries and a bottle of wine and had a nap for 2 hours. Now it’s 9:30 p.m. and it’s starting to feel like bedtime.

Internet is not as expensive as 7 years ago – $5/day here at the resort in Sydney.

We’re thinking of doing a hop on, hop off ferry tomorrow and maybe some geocaching as well.

Temperature today was about 22 C with high cloud.