33° 52′ 25.79″ S, 151° 11′ 34.80″ E
Ian Thorpe Aquatic Centre

Today is our last full day in Sydney. Yesterday we discovered that the Ian Thorpe Aquatic Center is only a 10 minute walk from our hotel.

Catherine really wanted to have a swim in the 50 meter pool so she had a light breakfast (I had the usual meat fest!) & we walked over to the center. I dropped my girl off for her swim 🙂 & I headed back to the hotel to get organized for the rest of the day.

Photo below copied from the internet.

The was no place for me to sit & watch Catherine swim so I headed out for another walk along Darling Harbour shoreline & we met up later back at the hotel. She said it was the best pool of the trip – salt water, perfect temperature, not too crowded!

Next on our agenda was to take the tour bus back to the Sydney Opera House area. We wanted to do some more exploring of the nearby area called “The Rocks”. This is a historic neighborhood with well preserved buildings & lots of history.

This afternoon we took a guided tour of the Opera House. It is an an amazing facility.

Unfortunately we were not allowed to take any photos inside the two main performance theaters but we were given a great tour of them.

We were hoping that we could attend a symphony concert while we were here but everything was sold out. However, we did manage to get some tickets to a comedy play “The Lyin Queen”. Promo photo below copied from the internet.

It was a hilarious spoof/mashup of 3 movies – The Lion King, Jurassic Park & King Kong. Lots of local, national & international comic jabs. We haven’t laughed this hard in a long time!

After the show we enjoyed a couple of “last views” of the Harbour Bridge

& the Opera House.

Back to our hotel for our last sleep there. We can’t believe how fast this past 5 days have gone by.

Tomorrow we board the cruise ship for the last phase of our down under adventures.

Cheers!

33.8568° S, 151.2153° E
Sydney Opera House

Today we booked a city tour on the local hop on-hop off bus service. Good thing I had a kangaroo burger a few days ago so I could hop on and off easily!

We caught our first bus on the “red” line at a stop across the street from our hotel.

It took us through Sydney’s central business district & then to the Sydney Opera House. In the business district we saw many old sandstone buildings mixed in with spectacular modern architecture.

We hopped off the bus at the Opera House & took in the great views of it & the Harbour Bridge.

There was a Carnival cruise ship at the dock where we will be boarding our Princess cruise ship on Wednesday. Very exciting!

We walked around the Opera House which is set on 4-1/2 acres so we got a lot of steps in just circling it!

The bus took us back to Darling Harbour where we had lunch, then got back on the bus on the “blue” line which took us on a different route out to Bondi Beach.

We popped back into our favourite cafe – Le Paris Go – for a cappuccino as it had started to rain. Hard to believe it was three weeks ago that we were here in the 30 C sunshine!

We got in line for the next bus back and were able to get a seat inside. We saw different parts of the Bondi area and some more spectacular views of the Sydney skyline and harbour. The real estate prices in this area must be obscene!

Some of the return route was starting to feel a little familiar. We drove by “our” laundromat three times today! Surely a cultural highlight!

This morning we hopped on the first bus of the day and this afternoon we hopped off of the last one – so we certainly got our money’s worth!

Photo below: the world’s tallest vertical garden building – One Central Park, located in downtown Sydney. 34 stories, 2,200 apartments & accommodations for 900 students.

We bought a two day pass so we can go back to the Opera House tomorrow for a longer visit.

This service is a great way to see the city and hear more about the history of the area. For example, the tour bus guide told the story that when the first British arrived in Australia they pointed at the kangaroos and asked the aborigines what the name of the animal was. They responding saying “kangaroo” which actually means “I don’t understand what you are saying.”

Cheers, mates!

Cook Phillip Park Pool
33.872146 S 151.212805 E

After breakfast at the hotel, we headed out on foot to find the Cook and Phillip Pool where Catherine was scheduled to take a swim clinic at 10:30.

She has been following the YouTube videos of Australian swimmer Brenton Ford at Effortless Swimming for a few years. It turned out that they were offering a freestyle clinic on the 24th here in Sydney so she signed up for it a few months ago.

We found the pool easily and were very early so we were able to have a quick look at St. Mary’s cathedral near the pool and the Anzac monument in Hyde Park. The monument was exceptional & very moving.

Cath went to get ready for the clinic.

I wasn’t allowed to take any photos or videos of the clinic so I made my way over to the National Maritime Museum to see some boats & other cool maritime stuff.

First on the agenda were tours of the submarine & the destroyer on display.

Submarine HMAS Onslow was built in Glasgow, Scotland in 1968 & was in service from 1969 to 1999. One of the tour guides on board told me that the Canadian Navy also had 4 of the same model submarine.

I have never been onboard a sub before so this was a real experience for me. It was interesting to go through it but there’s no way I would want to be in something like this while it was submerged!

The sub generally had a crew of 70 on board. It must have felt very crowded when the full crew was there & submerged!

Our first point of entry was through the hatch into the torpedo room!

Crew workstations were very small with gauges & valves everywhere.

The heads were even smaller!

Twin diesel generators for charging the sub’s batteries.

After exiting the sub I took a tour of the destroyer. It seemed very spacious compared to the sub!

The destroyer HMAS Vampire was launched in 1917 & was originally named HMS Wallace! I knew there was something special about this ship!

It was commissioned into the Australian Navy in 1959 & decommissioned in 1986.

Cath and I rendezvoused back at the hotel around 3:00. She was tired but happy after her 3-1/2 hour clinic.

There were three other adults and two young girls at the workshop, led by an Aussie world champion swimmer turned swim coach named Mitch Patterson. He led the group in some dry land exercises, then videoed each swimmer and analyzed each person’s freestyle stroke.

The group then did some drills in the water focusing on the advice from Mitch who then videoed and analyzed each person’s swimming again. She found it very interesting and helpful!

We treated ourselves to a nice dinner at a restaurant by Darling Harbour and capped off the day with a Pavlova for dessert. No kangaroos were harmed in the creation of this dessert!

The Kiwis and the Aussies both claim to have invented this meringue based dessert named after Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova. It doesn’t matter to me who thought it up – I’m just glad they did!

Cheers!

Novotel Sydney Darling Square
33°52′39″ S 151°12′11″ E

Today was an exciting day – well, at least the afternoon was!

This morning we were on a mission to get our laundry done. We have been on the road for almost 3 weeks & “essential” clothing items are getting to be in very short supply! Photo below – awesome mural on our hotel.

Unfortunately our hotel does not have any guest laundry facilities & the cost of having the hotel doing our laundry for us was prohibitive – not like India! So we loaded up our backpacks with our dirty laundry & searched on Google Maps for a nearby laundromat. There was one not too far away so we headed out on our quest.

We found the laundromat on a busy neighborhood street & fortunately there also was a comfy coffee shop just a few steps away. We were able to relax a bit while our our laundry was underway. Then back to the hotel for more sorting & folding. Job done! That should hold us until we get on board the cruise ship.

Next on the agenda was to find some place for lunch. There are dozens of restaurants along the Darling Harbour promenade & we found one with a nice patio table overlooking the water. Catherine had a nice & sensible cauliflower salad while I took a ride on the wild side & had a kangaroo burger, or, as I dubbed it as “Skippy on a bun”. Tasted like hamburgers to me!

After lunch we walked all the way down to the end of the promenade which took us past the Australian National Maritime Museum that had some very cool boats parked outside!

On our way back to the hotel we had a quick visit to a Chinese Tea Exposition at the Sydney Convention Center. Catherine found a nice wall unit for our apartment that was on sale for “only” $15,000!

We did pretty good today & walked over 16 kilometers. Back home I’d be doing well to walk that distance in a month.

Tomorrow I am going to visit the maritime museum & Catherine has a water-oriented adventure of her own planned.

Cheers!

Novotel Sydney Darling Square
17 Little Pier St. Sydney
33°52′39″ S 151°12′11″ E

We were up early this morning to head to the airport in Auckland to return our rental car & then fly “back” to Sydney.

We got our rental car back to the airport in plenty of time to check in for our flight. During our time in New Zealand we drove approximately 2,500 kilometers around the North Island without any incidents. What a fantastic place to visit! (Photo below is copied from the internet – New Zealand’s north & south islands as seen from space).

Driving in NZ seemed easier that when we drove in the UK a few years ago. I think having a car with an automatic transmission helped a lot – compared to our car in the UK that had a 5-speed manual transmission.

Most of the roads we were on here were wider with only two lanes for the most part & had paved shoulders so that helped a lot too. Catherine was a lot more comfortable in the passenger seat on this trip & was able to dispose of the paper bag after just a few hours on the road.

Checking in for our flight to Sydney took a lot longer than we had planned – almost 2 hours. Several Air New Zealand flights were cancelled or delayed, the automatic kiosks were having lots of problems & as a result the lineups were horrendous. Thankfully we had lots of time before our flight so the waiting wasn’t anything more than an inconvenience for us.

We chatted with a woman in line with us who was flying home to Sydney. She had already evacuated her home twice in the past few weeks due to the bush fires and was expecting to have to do so again when she got back. It’s a disastrous situation for the country.

Farewell New Zealand!

We had a 3-hour flight to Sydney & arrived at around 1:30 in the afternoon.

Hello Australia! Traveling from one boater’s paradise to another in the same day is almost too much to handle!

They have “everything” in Australia – even modern “two holers” in Sydney’s airport’s public bathrooms!

After briefly visiting this highlight I caught up with Catherine & we took a shuttle to our hotel from the airport. Well, we thought it was our hotel. We went to the Novotel Darling Harbour but when we tried to check in to our room we were told that we were supposed to be at Novotel Darling Square – another property about 1 km away. Whoda thought that there would be two Novotel Hotels so close to each other?

We decided to walk from one hotel to the other. Some kind souls helped us find our way alongside the harbour and we were settled into our room by 3:00.

Our hotel is at the end of the harbour & there are dozens of restaurants & shops within a very short walking distance. The entire waterfront area is developed as public space for pedestrians only. We will have lots to explore over the next few days.

The city is blanketed with haze from the bush fires but there was some rain tonight so that dampened things down a bit.

There are usually fireworks on Saturday nights over the harbour but they have been cancelled out of respect for all the hardship caused by the fires.

We will stay here for the next 5 nights before we board the cruise ship so it will be nice to be in one place for a while. Lots to see & do here!

We will start off tomorrow with an exciting walking tour of the local neighborhood in search of a laundromat. Reality approaches.

Cheers!