Safely arrived, tired but ready to explore. The flight out was indeed endless but being in Business Class was great. The seats reclined completely and we each had our own entertainment console with a 15" screen and lots of movies, TV and computer games to choose from. I watched two movies and then slept and read. We were whisked through customs and into a car laid on by the cruise company and so were at the hotel by about 10AM Sunday morning (having left LA at about 10PM Friday). So we left our luggage and set out to explore.
The Shangri La Hotel is up above the harbor and the hills are quite reminiscent of San Francisco. There are stairs everywhere and Catherine isn't able to manage them too well (nor am I come to that). We found our way down to Circular Quay. The weather is spectacular and the air is so fresh - hard to believe it is January. Our first purchase was sunscreen - yes, we brought some but it was still in our bags naturally. We had a great time leisurely making our way along the Quay with various stops for shopping and finally arriving at the Sydney Cove Oyster Bar where we parked ourselves and worked our way through a wide variety of local seafood.
Much refreshed we then staggered on to the Opera House. Can we talk steps??? As we were clearly nearing the end of our day one stamina we explore the ground level of the Opera House complex until we found the stage door. There the door-keeper summoned a minion who conducted us to an elevator and up to the box office level. Because this is school holiday time and thus high season not a ticket to be had but we did make a few select purchases in the shop.
Back down the elevator, courtesy of the same charming young man, and then out to explore the stalls that were set up along the way. We chatted with a local photographer who already had some spectacular color views of the fireworks from New Year's Eve. He told us about his adventures taking the images and how he spent the last two days rushing them into print. We bought postcards from him and they are really neat.
Finally into a cab and back to the hotel where we finally got into our room. So we feel like we are off to a great start. More to follow.
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