We awoke late the next day, and once again coffee had to be our first thing. We ended up walking down to King’s Wharf again given the coffee shops we had seen, and then decided on a small restaurant, and sat to watch people walk by as we drank coffee. All three of us ended up ordering some food as well, and I enjoyed fresh strawberries with a side of bacon for breakfast. It was nearly perfect! I say nearly only because an accordion player had set up just outside the restaurant on the wharf, and was playing for coins. No sooner had I thought that “The Chicken Dance” was inevitable than the guy pulled in some children who were walking by and offered to teach them to dance. Yep, The Chicken Dance.
The smiles were pre-“Chicken Dance.”
The food though, was good, the coffee delicious, and we continued heading up the pier toward the Sydney Opera House to get away from the accordion. We walked by crowds of people, Sunday not being quite as dead as we had thought, and watched families and many other tourists as we all converged on the same spot. While at the Opera House, we’d see families out for the day pushing strollers, wedding photos taking place, and at least one birthday party’s worth of children all running around.
The Sydney Opera House
I have a million pictures of the Opera House. Well, that might be a slight exaggeration but it must be a close number because I found all sorts of fascinating angles and took a great number of shots. At the same time, I tried to grab some “life in Sydney” pictures as well, but it’s always a balance between taking pictures of strangers and trying not to let them know you’re doing so at the same time. Nobody got mad, but I also wasn’t very invasive. I’ll post a few here in the future if any work out!
Part of the wedding, or at least I think it was a wedding…
After walking the steps at the Opera House, we headed into the royal botanic gardens nearby. We wandered the paths back and forth, got yelled at by a homeless lady who was hiding in the shade of some bushes, found the cafe at the middle of the park (but decided we didn’t really need any more coffee), and then remembered we were meant to be heading to the Sydney Observatory much further West! We cut back through the city, ending up at our hotel along the way to drop off the larger camera for cell phone cameras, and then walked over to the Observatory taking nearly an identical path to the one last night that led to the Sydney Harbor Bridge.
A walkway in the Royal Botanical Gardens
Sydney Observatory is one of the oldest observatories that is still “functional” today. I put functional in quotations only because it is now a tourist spot… but seeing the building today it is still quite impressive. Access to the areas here is free, however tours do cost money if you want a guide. Jen, Jon, and I decided just to walk around ourselves, and after learning about the history of the Observatory (and playing with the knobs that made the exhibits move, you know you would too!) we walked behind the building and into another small park. The Observatory is high on a hill all by itself, as you would expect, and very few people were with us as we sat on a bench and took in the scenery. From the park, we were overlooking parts of Sydney and got a really good view of the bridge. I pointed it out to Jen, saying “Hey! We climbed that!”. It’s still pretty cool!
Sydney Observatory
We realized, sitting there in the sun, that we had no bridge to climb later that day. In fact, we had no activities planned at all! We could drink! Jon suggested the oldest brewery in town (The Lord Nelson Brewery), since we were already nearby, and we agreed. It was time to jump feet-first into vacation mode and spend a little less time moving so quickly!
“Hey, we climbed that!”
We walked to The Lord Nelson, and ordered drinks and some appetizers. We had chicken wings, garlic bread, olives, and other bar foods. As this week has gone by we’re all getting a little bit sick of bar foods, we’ll have to see what our next destinations have to offer to maybe get away from this a bit! At the same time, the beer was very good (I had one called “Three Sheets”), and we were also near the bridge pylons for the Sydney Harbor Bridge again. While Jen and I elected to go hop to another bar, Jon climbed the pylon (this add-on is free if you climb the bridge) and then met up with us again after getting some good pictures. We continued on our bar-hopping tour, ended up walking through an area known as The Rocks, and to “The Rocks Market“, another closed-street affair much like Chinatown, and then found a chocolate store that was very much like my vision of what heaven must look like, called Guylian. I believe I’ve also had this in Costa Rica, though I have to double check!
On our walk, we’d wander under the bridge. See the walkways underneath on the sides? That’s where you start!
Small shops in the streets, and random carvings in the bricks
Way, way too much chocolate!
On the clock, it was only about five in the evening… but by this point we were all very tired from days on days of getting up early and fitting so much in. We elected to head back to the hotel, where I had picked up some soju in previous days while in an Asian market, and Jon and I continued drinking while Jen took it easy due to too much chocolate. I may have overdone the soju, and soon Jon and I were running across the street (literally, the lights here take too long) to buy late-night Dominos pizza for us all.
We finished by packing our things, we’d be flying out early in the morning for New Zealand.
The Sydney Harbor
