This was a busy day. It began early, with me rising before dawn to catch a glimpse of the iconic Sydney Opera House as we docked. I wasn’t disappointed – I got some good photos.
But disappointment – and panic – soon followed when I realized that my phone was unable to connect to the cell service in Sydney. That had never happened before, even in third world islands. To eliminate the suspense, I will tell you what I learned later in the day: older cell phones (like mine) sometimes don’t recognize the cellular frequency used in Sydney. That leaves me hope that it will resume working when I get to Europe. But in the meantime, only Marlene’s phone has service. I have to rely on her phone and its hotspot to do anything – maps, text, email and, of course, blogging. But the hotel has free WiFi and I can use it when there.
Disembarkation went pretty smoothly. As usual, we took our bags ashore with us. We grabbed a taxi to the hotel. The driver asked us if $40 was ok. When we said that Uber was only $28 he said “Well, you can pay $35 if you prefer.” If we prefer? Yes, we prefer to pay less. Interesting negotiation.
We arrived at the hotel around 9:30am and were surprised to hear that the room was empty and we could go right up. We were even allowed to grab some breakfast. So far this hotel has impressed us. I will give a full review later but Marlene has already complimented me for choosing it.
We then embarked on a day of walking to various sites of interest. Our initial goal was to view the Sydney Opera House from land and we did that but along the way we saw many beautiful parks, interesting buildings and learned of a shopping mall and cathedral and we had to add those to our itinerary. All told we logged 15,000 steps. And we weren’t done – at 11pm we went for a stroll down by the harbor and added another 3,000 steps. A lot of walking on a very full day. We slept well.
Sydney is chock full of beautiful public spaces and public buildings. The New South Wales Library is amazing. If you think that libraries are no longer relevant, just visit this one. It was filled with students doing research and the second floor was a combination of an art gallery and a playground for children.
We walked from the library to the Opera House and got some good photos both there and on the way there. We found the Carnival Luminosa still docked near the Opera House.
We wandered the city in search of a magnet for Marlene’s brother Mike and eventually found ourselves at the Pitt Street Mall. That is where I learned that my phone might simply be too old to work in Sydney. We also got some chinese food from the food court. The serving was so large that it fed both of us and we packed up about half of it to take back to the hotel. On the way back to the hotel we stumbled upon St Mary’s Cathedral and went inside. We were both completely blown away by what we saw. This cathedral is both HUGE and BEAUTIFUL It is, I believe, larger than Notre Dame in Paris and is every bit as beautiful. Just not as old.
After a nap and some cards (Marlene won 2 to my 1) we strolled down to the harbor. We found some interesting people to talk to but were a bit surprised at how quiet the area was. Saturday night and none of the bars had music. Not like most American cities. We strolled on the pier at Finger Quay and admired the many multi-million dollar boats.
