February 5, 2017

February 5 afternoon in Sydney

  This map shows the area where we will be concentrating most of our sightseeing within Sydney.

By 3 o’clock Sunday afternoon, under a partly cloudy sky and a temperature of +35 C, we were walking back to Museum transit station to find the train to take us to Circular Quay. The hotel is in Chinatown, not shown on this map, and about three streets away from Sydney Town Hall. Near the beginning of the walk, we detoured to Paddy’s Market on the edge of Chinatown. It is larger than Toronto’s St. Lawrence Market, but more like a flea market.  We found some nice souvenir t-shirts to buy, then continued our walk to catch the train using the transit passes that we bought at the airport earlier.

  We took the train to Circular Quay where the ferries are docked as well as the harbour cruise boats and a cruise ship, Celebrity Solstice.  It was a lively pier area of the extensive Sydney Harbour.  From the transit station, we had a great view of the 19th century Customs House and it activities for the Chinese New Year two week festival. As we walked past the cafés and restaurants lining the ferry piers, we could see the Sydney Opera House, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, about a five minute walk away. Sydney Opera House, designed by Jorn Utzon, was built over 15 years and was completed in1973. Its distinctive curved white roofs are made of white and off-white tiles, which easily catch the sun’s rays. They represent the seashells of the ancient waste heap on top of which it is built.  Different native tribes would locate a camp at the site and use the waste heap as a signal to the next group occupying the site would know which kind of shellfish was last eaten and fish for another variety of shellfish, thus ensuring that no species would be overfished.  Then turn toward the water and your eye catches the majestic Sydney Harbour Bridge, which at the time had the cruise ship, Dawn Princess, sailing under it.

   Sydney started as a British convict colony.  In 1788, it was at Sydney Cove where Captain Arthur Phillip, commander of the First Fleet, established the first British colony in Australia. By the late 19th century it had developed into a large city with impressive buildings.

  We walked over to the Sydney Opera House lower courtyard and saw two huge 5 or 6 meter high colourful fighting roosters, celebrating the new Chinese New Year of the Fire Rooster. Next stop, across the street from the Sydney Opera House, was the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney within a large park that also contains Australia’s Government House, which is over 100 years old.  The official Australia capitol is Canberra.  There were many families enjoying the hot day. We found a lovely two meter high bronze sundial in the Herb Garden near the rose garden.  We decided that we should return back to the hotel and walked along Pitt Street which has a closed pedestrian shopping street on part of it.  There are people from all over Asia calling Sydney home.

  We stopped at the 3 Wise Monkeys Pub for burgers, fries, beer and wine for supper.  All were quite good.

  We continued our stroll to the hotel and found Dixon Street very close to the hotel, which had two arches at one end of the three street section which were the common Chinese tiger statues.  Red lanterns were strung from tree branches along the length of the street.  There were many varieties of Asian food from take-out delis to white linen service, one restaurant featuring Peking Duck another bowls of noodles.  Also there were small grocery stores and bakeries, too.

The sun shone even as we entered the hotel, since it is Australia’s summer now.  We were back in our room by 7:30, ready to catch on missed sleep from the flight here.

Sightseeing in Sydney today we walked 16,058 steps about 16.72 miles.