And then the rain came

We awoke Tuesday morning planning to take the ferry to the Taronga Zoo, but it was lightly raining so we decided that spending a day looking at animals in the rain after being on a ferry and then a cable car, was not our idea of enjoyment. Instead we decided to stay close to the hotel. After borrowing a couple umbrellas at the hotel, we decided to head to The Rocks. Before discussing The Rocks, this is probably a good time to discuss the hotel and Sydney in general.

Our hotel was The Menzies Hotel Sydney.

The hotel is in the CBD (Central Business District) of Sydney and is centrally located to the many tourist areas that Sydney has to offer. The positive of being in the CBD is that you are equally close to The Rocks, the Opera House area/wharf and Darling Harbor. The negative is that because it is a business district, after dark there are few places to eat. The other areas that one can stay at are Darling Harbor, which is an area that appears to me to be the Las Vegas-ication of Sydney as it is mostly hotels, restaurants and unauthentic tourist sites and the Rocks/Opera House area, which to me is a classy tourist site with many expensive hotels. Our day on the HOHO bus really gave us a great overview and we determined that we were very happy with where we were staying.

We walked to The Rocks which is the original, historical Sydney and went to the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Rocks Museum and then the highlight of The Rocks visit, watched individuals make candy by hand in a store. Not so sophisticated now Gary, huh? Well what was really cool is that the craftsman kept adding chunks of different colored pieces of the sugared substance on the side and eventually pulled the candy into a thin, cylindrical tootsie roll size which they chopped into individual pieces. They gave us samples and we were shocked to see that all of that addition of different colored candy led to a message in the candy. I can't explain it. These are the kind of globs they pushed together.

While it was touted that we should climb, yes that's climb the Sydney Harbor Bridge, we opted to only walk across it. 

The Bridge is about .7 miles long and quite windy on the road surface so I can only imagine how windy it is up there for the folks that fork over a couple hundred dollars depending on day of the week and time of day, to spend about 3 hours climbing the bridge. Here is a picture of the bridge that Felice took from the Sydney Opera House area.

Here is a picture Felice took from the bridge.

Our walk was fine and we learned that the bridge was built during the Depression and at the time it was named the Suspenders because it employed 3,000 and helped hold Sydney up during the Depression. Now it is affectionately called the Coat Hanger or just The Bridge. After a quick lunch at a local establishment in North Sydney, we took a train back and actually changed at a station near our hotel to get to Circular Quay. (Quay is pronounced "key".) 

We then walked to the Sydney Opera House. It is magnificent to behold and even looks great from inside. Here are some shots Felice and I took from angles you rarely see.

We then went into the Opera House to the ticket office to pick up our tickets for a backstage tour on Thursday morning and an opera on Wednesday night. We found excellent WIFI on the grounds which became our home away from home to keep in contact. It seems that our hotel allowed us 30 minutes free in the lobby on each electronic device each day. That was not enough to satisfy our needs so we visited the Opera House a couple times for shade and WIFI. We then walked through the Royal Gardens, which is where Felice got the shots of the Opera House from the other side and then headed to the hotel. We got detoured at Max Brenner's for some chocolate sweets and as the Alka Seltzer commercial said, "I can't believe I ate the whole thing." Take a look at this link for the incredible chocolate delights that they offered us there.

Dessert was great and it was time for relaxation and nap. We then had a lite, late dinner at a local chain called Pie Face.

We then ambled back to the hotel to rest up for another big day!