Sydney – Opera House Day

We got a fairly early start this morning? We started by figuring out which bus to catch and where to catch it in order to get down to the Circular Quay.
We caught bus #333 from Bondi Beach to the end of the route at the Circular Quay. This is also the location for the Sydney Opera House and it is the starting point for the large fleet of water ferry’s.
We started by heading for the Opera House, taking in the sights and having a hard time believing we were actually there.

From this pier/plaza area you can watch the ferry’s come and go plus it is a great place to see the Harbour Bridge. The Harbour Bridge is a pretty iconic structure and people actually pay a lot of money to climb to the top of it. If you look hard in the picture you can see a group at the top.

We were able to book tour tickets for an inside look of the Opera House. However the tour didn’t start till later in the afternoon so we headed to the Royal Botanical Gardens, to walk around.

After the Botanical Gardens we joined up with our tour group for an inside look of the Opera House. The tour was 1 hour long and it covered everything from the early political wrangling to approve construction, to early engineer and design, to governmental scope changes and even detail on the external tiles and how they are and were designed. Little fact, there are over 1 million tiles on the exterior of the building.

Just before we finished the tour we were taken to the main theatre that holds 2700 people and while visiting we listened to an Austrian pianist practicing for her evening performance.
We forgot to mention that in the basement of our hotel is a fantastic veggie market and combined grocery store, it’s very handy.