We arrived in Sydney in the early hours of Thursday 30th June after a seven and a half hour flight through the night from Singapore. By the time dinner was served and I had watched a film "The Dilemma" (total rubbish), none of us got very much sleep. We made our way by train to our hotel, the Medina Grand in Kent Street, but of course it was far too early to check in so we stored our luggage and walked down to Circular Quay where we decided to go on the Captain Cook 2 hour harbour boat tour at 10 a.m. We saw a tour guide dressed as Captain Cook, to which Davie murmured, "He doesn't have to wear that; uniform is optional!" which I thought was very funny! The boat tour gave us a really good overview of Sydney Harbour. I had no idea how big it is - the biggest natural harbour in the world, with lots of different inlets. The guide had very honeyed tones which we found quite amusing, for example the way she said "We have a lifeboat; not a very big one, but we have plenty of life jackets!" set us all off laughing. The guide was also obsessed with property prices and regaled us with how much all the houses in the expensive suburbs were currently selling for, especially those belonging to Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman and so on. The rest of the commentary was however quite interesting and we heard that Captain Cook had been deceived by the narrow opening to the harbor into passing it by in 1770 on his way to Botany Bay, because he thought that it was unremarkable so the area was developed by a Governor Phillip 18 years later. However by the end of the tour we were all so tired that we were dozing off, so we set off back to the hotel where we waited for a short time until our room was ready. Our apartment on the 26th floor is really lovely, very spacious with a large living area and two bedrooms. The living area has a smart kitchen off it and a feature semi-circular window with great city views and a view down to Darling Harbour. However we hardly took all this in before we all went straight to bed and slept for 3 hours! Later James and I nipped out to Woolworths and got some shopping, Jamie cooked us dinner and we had an early night.
We all woke feeling refreshed and set off walking back to Circular Quay and to the Sydney Opera House. Amazing building, I could hardly believe we were actually there. it is not as white as I thought, more a creamy colour covered with tiles. We walked all around it and up and down the steps then went on a tour which was well worth it, very interesting, it explained the whole concept from the initial competition and design through its construction, expense, delays and final completion. Quite sad that the architect, Jørn Utzon, resigned from the project due to disputes about the delays, and it was completed by another architect. In the late 90's Utzon was commissioned to do more work on the interiors which he was pleased about, although he never did visit the finished product. We had lunch at the cafe downstairs, very nice to be sitting outside on the 1st of July which is the middle of winter in Sydney! The temperature is in the early 60s which is similar to the temperature we left in Scotland! We were offered a deal by the tour guide; for another 50 dollars per person we could get the best remaining seats for an evening performance of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. We enquired at the box office and the seat we got were Premier, with a face value of 118 dollars each. We then went for a walk in the Botanic Gardens where we saw egrets walking about and very noisy white parakeets. We walked out to Mrs Macquarie's Point and got some wonderful views of the sun setting over the Opera House. Back to the apartment for tea and we dressed up a bit, then back to the Opera House for the performance. It was performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. In the first half there was "Tasso, Lament and Triumph" by Liszt, then Schumann's "Piano Concerto in A minor". The second half was Mussorgsky. I don't know very much about classical music and I have never heard this before, although James learned about it at school. I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially the lovely music where he promenades between the pictures. James and the boys also enjoyed the music and the magnificent setting of the concert hall. Alasdair declared the experience to be "fantastic"!
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