Sydney, Land of Bridges and an Opera House

February 4, 2013, in port Sydney, Australia:  Visiting the Plants.

At 7am, we passed through the Heads and entered Sydney Harbor.  For the next hour, we watched one of the most beautiful cities and its harbor unfold before us.  At 8am, we docked at Wharf 5 in Darlington Harbor.

The Heads -- Entering Sydney Harbor

The head with the lighthouse is a favorite spot for suicides.

Sydney from Sydney Harbor

Would Capt. Phillips believe this?

Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbor Bridge

Sydney's two most familiar icons.

 Docking at Wharf 5, Darington Harbor

A new cruise terminal was under construction, so we got the tents.  They were airconditioned.

After breakfast, we took the shuttle bus into downtown Sydney, near Circular Quay, and began our self-guided city tour by walking through downtown to the Royal Botanic Garden.

Walking Tour -- Downtown City Street Scenes

From the shuttle bus stop to the Royal Botanic Garden is ALL up hill -- pant, pant.

Sydney Royal Botanic Garden

Tropical Center (central image of collage)

Close-ups, Royal Botanic Garden

Love the bird.  "This is my lawn and you stay off it!"

Inside the Tropical Center, Royal Botanic Garden

It's like going to the rainforest without the mud and rain.

Two hours of walking in the gardens and visiting the Tropical Center was about all the natural history we could stand in one day.  We found the street;  walked past the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the St. Mary's Cathedral; crossed Hyde Park; and continued to the Queen Victoria Building for a coffee.  Finishing our coffee and a treat, we returned to the shuttle bus stop and back to the ship.

Sydney Street Scenes -- Art Gallery of New South Wales, St. Marys Cathedral and Hyde Park

Yes, Hyde Park, and all this time you thought it was in London.

At 6pm, the dreaded lifeboat drill, now required for ALL passengers at every port where the ship embarks new passengers, was held.  This is another example of training for something that will not happen as you have trained for it.  And, putting ~300 overweight, overage, old farts on deck in a crisis will probably kill them before they get in the lifeboats.

Silver Whisper sailed for Melbourne via the Bass Strait at 7pm.  All of us felt quite "secure" after the lifeboat drill.


February 5, 2013, en route Melbourne, Australia:  Through the Bass Strait.

The one-day sail from Sydney to Melbourne was uneventful.  There were some swells, but nothing like the wave sizes that were predicted by "expert" cruisers on the ship.  We had a quiet day and attended a wonderful lecture by Lynne Truss, author of "Eats, Shoots & Leaves:  A Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation."  Lynne's lecture inspired E to select the book for her book club in June, after we return to Kona.