Sydney Explorer

Thursday November 4^th

We decided to spend our last day in Sydney seeing as much as we could so bought 2 tickets for the Bondi Explorer, a hop on, hop off service.

We stayed on the bus until Watson’s Bay. Kelvin and Kay will remember this for Doyle’s famous fish restaurant.

We walked along the coastal path to the Gap, to get a great view of where the Pacific Ocean meets the harbour.

 It’s a beautiful spot but unfortunately the high cliffs also attract potential suicides. While we were there, a police helicopter flew low over our heads, obviously on a search.

We then walked in the other direction to the next bus stop and continued as far as Bondi Beach. We saw Bondi in the rain, which was quite good as it meant the beach was quiet.

From Bondi we walked further along the cliff path.

There is a special exhibition taking place for a few weeks called “Sculpture by the Sea”.

One hundred different exhibits are displayed on the headland, rocks or even on the sand, as they were on Tamarama Bay. These are sculpted from stone, metal, wood and even turf!

Some make you smile and some just make you stop and scratch your head!

We walked as far as Bronte Beach, taking lots of photos of the white sand and turquoise sea, then picked up the bus again, which took us to Coogee Beach and through the Sydney suburbs.

We got off at Hyde Park so that we could see some of the older buildings, such as St. Mary’s Cathedral, Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney Hospital, the library and of course our own hotel, the original part of which used to be the old Treasury Building, and was built on the site of the Governer's garden and the site of the first vineyard in Australia.

All very impressive buildings – it’s a pity there aren’t more of them in the city.

We were surprised to see the sculpture of ‘Il Porcellino’, which is a famous statue in Florence. This is a copy and was a gift from Florence to the people of Sydney. Just like in Florence, rubbing his nose will bring good luck. We noticed that people obviously rub another part of him as well!

We strolled back to our hotel through the Botanic Gardens, gazing up at the bats hanging from the trees like Christmas decorations.

It had been a long, but enjoyable day. Tomorrow we’re off to Melbourne.