A PERFECT DAY IN SYDNEY

I can't even begin to tell you how terrific today was. The weather was perfect - not too hot and not too cold, sunny and slight breeze.

We didn't get an early start this morning. We woke up early but by the time we got our act together and got out of the hotel room it was already 9 am. We went to the Starbucks on the corner near the hotel and ordered a large hot, black coffee and a pastry and took them outside and sat in the sunshine and enjoyed them with the pigeons. We finally managed to move from this spot around 10 am. We walked over and got on the hop on hop off bus for the day. We were gone all day long and could have stayed on for tomorrow too. We simply didn't have enough time to see all the stuff we wanted to.

Our first stop was Hyde Park Barracks Museum. This was built by the convicts and originally housed convicts, then women who came to Australia seeking a better life - they were called "unaccompanied, unprotected women" hmmmmm anyway back to the story - lastly it was used for a court house prior to be turned into a museum. It was fascinating and I talked with one of the women volunteers for about an hour. We could have stayed longer but we had more stops we wanted to make.

Then we went to Mrs. Macquarie's chair which is a huge stone boulder than looks like a chair. It is inscribed by one of the govenors of Australia from the 1816 period. The thing that makes this stop so special is not the chair but the spectacular views of Sydney Harbour, the Opera House and the Sydney Bridge. The photos we took here are fantastic.

Onto the National Maritime Museum and the Australian HMB Endeavour - this was the ship that Captain James Cook sailed. Of course, it is a replicia but it was so interesting we spent a couple of hours here and I bumped my head on the overhead (it is like 4 tall and you basically have to crawl thru parts - folks this wasn't a pretty site to see - me crawling thru this ship). Lots of volunteers with tons and tons of information and we talked with them a long time.

By the time it was time for the bus to stop running so we had to quit for the day. We were both tired as it was a much fuller day than we had anticipated. We stopped for a quick bite to eat and came back to the hotel to relax.

We are thinking of buying ferry passes for tomorrow - they are like $6 for the entire day and there are lots of places that they take you to that we would like to go.

Until tomorrow

Sam and Char