Friday, April 8, 2011

busing, walking & biking around...

We have had a busy 3 days here in Sydney, Australia. The first day we took the Hop-On, Hop-Off Tour Bus around the city to find out the history of the town. Then we transferred to the Bondi Beach run where we got off and checked out this historic area. The beach itself was beautiful and the town was lovely, but it was a little too cold for us. Some lovely gelato made up for this.
The next day we got up early to catch the bus to the Australian Museum. This was advertized as one of the top 10 places to see, but we were a little disappointed. It had an interesting dinosaur display, but otherwise mainly consisted of stuffed animals and birds. We walked on to the Hyde Park Barracks, a museum dedicated to the convicts that originally populated the area. These Barracks housed the convicts at night after they spent the day working for their “masters” as part of their sentence. It was a great look back at how Sydney was run in those days. I also found out that James McMullen (distant relative perhaps) was sentenced to 7 years for pickpocketing...interesting find. We continued our walk all the way to the Sydney Opera house where we bought tickets for the Saturday afternoon symphony performance (something to look forward to). Finally we strolled across the first part of the Harbour Bridge. By then our feet hurt, so we came back to the hotel for a quiet evening in.
Today we headed out to Manly on the Ferry. It was a beautiful sunny day so we rented a couple of bikes to go check out the sites. The man renting the bikes said there were a couple of short, steep hills but we didn’t let this stop us. Short my gluteus maximus! (If any of my students are reading this the term refers to a muscle in the human anatomy, look it up for educational purposes). Once we got past the one LONG uphill the rest was beautiful. We enjoyed a beautiful view of Sydney and a leisurely ride along the beach. Manly is not to be missed, the town is lovely and the beach was the best yet. Of course all this riding made us thirsty so we headed to the local microbrewery for their sample tray. Five small glasses of interesting beers made on site. (Again we took one for the team!) Tonight we are hoping to find a nice Tapas place for dinner before we go to the Sydney Football Stadium to watch the South Sydney Rabbitohs play the Wests Tigers. This is a game in the National Rugby League, should be a blast! 





2 comments:

  1. Interesting about James McMullen. Colin looks like he found Utopia with all that beer in front of him!! B.

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  2. The beer already looks tipsy. How did the bike rider fair on the way home?

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