City Day

Saturday 2 April
     Today my friends and I decided we needed a trip into the city seeing as my friend Kirsten and I still hadn't been to the opera house or the botanic gardens. Yep, it took me 2 MONTHS to get to the opera house.

My first time at the Opera House!

     We started our journey on the lovely Manly ferry, and I got seasick of course, and then headed straight over to the opera house. We walked around the whole thing, the part facing the water is all windows. Can you imagine the view? The "sails" of the opera house looke different up close, almost like a reflective material... kind of like what speed limit signs look like up close, but rougher. Soon we made it over the Opera house steps where we took pictures. I'm planning on attending a show before I leave, we're thinking a ballet, so that's when I'll get pictures inside!

This is what the "sails" look like up close.

     After pictures we moved on to the Royal Botanic Gardens, which happen to be right next to the opera house. We wandered around, it was pretty much a park, but there were some gorgeous views of the harbour and some cool structures. The coolest but also slightly creepy part was all the bats! Literally hundreds of them hanging from the trees. And of course not just any trees, but the old creepy looking ones like in Snow White. Yeah, cree-py! We even saw a couple of them fighting. Also, they make the weirdest noise. I took a video and all the background noise is the bats! Check out the video bar to listen.

All those black balls hanging... BATS! 

The clock. 

     After the gardens we headed over to the Queen Victoria Building, the QVB to do some shopping. This building has an elaborate romanesque architecture. It was built during a recession in Sydney, and was planned to be huge, so as to employ as many craftsmen and tradespeople as possible. It is a tribute to the long standing monarch Queen Victoria.  My favorite part of the whole building was this amazing clock inside. It had all these engraving and had little people moving about it. It was gorgeous. The way this particular shopping area is set up is the most expensive shops up top, and the lower on the level you go, the cheaper the shops are. Its pretty handy if you're on a budget, because you just don't go upstairs!

Creepy Luna Park entrance. haha. 

     After we were done shopping, we headed back to circular quay to take another ferry over the Luna Park. This is a little amusement park right under the other side of the harbour under the bridge. It doesn't have a ton of rides, and was pretty expensive, $10 per ride, but we decided to check it out for dinner and just not go on rides. It was pretty small, but it was fun to see all kids and eat some carnival food, a corn dog and fairy floss (that's what they call cotton candy). Also my hot dog part of the corn dog was dyed bight pink! Seriously if you shut of the lights, this thing would have glowed! It was concerning, but I was so hungry I ate it anyways.
     After we finished dinner we hopped back on the fairy, which was tiny but so fast I didn't get seasick on this one, and headed back to circualar quay. Here we got gelatto, I had mint chip and "American" chocolate.... which apparently means snickers, and waited to head back to Manly.