Day 30. Sydney to Vietnam.

Yesterday was my last day in Sydney. I started out having breakfast at Harborside at Darling Harbor. Again, very nostalgic of Baltimore.



Then I headed down to The Rocks, that first established white settlement in Sydney I had mentioned before, for their weekend market. (I ran into one of the couples from the wine tour I had taken!)

Then I headed to the opposite side of the harbor to walk through the botanic garden. What a wonderful in-city garden, with lots of old lush trees...




The government house is within the garden...


...and as you meander through the park, there are great views of the harbor icons together...



As you can see it was a bit of a cloudy day, but that made it perfect for all of the walking I was doing. It never really rained.

They encourage you to walk on the grass, sit in the grass, bring your picnic....and I was sorry I hadn't brought along some lunch.

Continuing on around the park, I came to my destination, which was Mrs. Macquarie's chair...




where the governor's wife in the early 1800's had carved a chair out of the rock where she could watch the ships come into the harbor...



The guide books said that if you don't get there early, especially on a weekend, you have to wait in a long line to get your photo in the chair. But they were setting up for a triathlon in the vicinity, and so I think a lot of folks were intimated to walk through the setup area, so it was just me and 4 other people there, one of whom snapped my photo!

Then it was back around the garden, with the backdrop of the cityscape...



..and back over to the other side of the harbor to do the bridge walk...



...for yet more views of the opera house (enough already, right? :-)



Everyone had talked me out of the bridge climb and so I only did the walk across the bridge. For the "climb" you actually climb up to the very top of the bridge span (they did it onThe amazing race once). Anyway, its quite expensive, and they don't let you take your camera with you, and then they take photos of you and charge yet another exhorbitant fee for the photos, so I skipped it.

Then, nine hours after I had left my hotel room, I returned, with my tired feet, to pack up for the next leg of my trip. Today, I am off to Vietnam!

Not sure what my wifi access will be for the next two weeks while in Vietnam and then Burma, so I may go silent during some of this next leg of the trip.

Cheers!

Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Cahill Expy,The Rocks,Australia