Every day it seems we are out from early morning until evening, beating the pavement, trying to soak in and see as much of Sydney as we can. I think we are doing a pretty darn good job of it, too, lol! Yesterday, Tuesday, we were out bright and early and headed to the Royal Botanical Gardens. We re-traced our steps from days previous and headed through Hyde Park. I don't think it is possible to get tired of walking through Hyde Park, though maybe native Sydneyites might say otherwise. It is astonishingly beautiful.
But I hadn't seen the Royal Botanical Gardens yet.
Besides being HUGE and covering acres of area, the Botanical Gardens are absolutely stunning! There are a myriad of walk paths that meander up, down, and through the park. There are these gorgeous expanses of emerald green lawn where you are invited to lay and soak up the sun, sit on a blanket and eat your lunch at leisure -- or take a respite upon one of the many benches that dot the gardens, hidden among the huge ficus trees, or lined up beautifully under the rose arbors with their burden of buds dripping down around you, intoxicating you with their lovely scent. It is truly a beautiful and relaxing place. We walked all over on our way to view the Governor's House and then on to the steps of the Opera House. We could see the harbor through the trees and the view just took your breath away. If you can just imagine it; the sky so blue it hurts the eyes, the trees so green, their branches sweeping out and up, the rolling green lawn, the vibrant flowers dotting the landscape here and there, and the harbor glistening in the distance, the sun sparkling upon the water like a million diamonds, the ferries and sailboats crossing over the water, breaking up the view with their sails and wakes. Just fantastic!!
Mark and I were talking about how we couldn't have picked a better time to come -- the weather has been incredible, in the 60's, it just begs you to take advantage of it and stay out all day long, walking here and there, exploring along the way.
Along our walk in the gardens, we took a little dirt path that led you through "Australia's tropicals" -- all of a sudden one of the boys, I can't remember which, gasps and says, "LOOK! A bat!" We all look up and, sure enough, there was a fruit bat dangling from a branch off and to the left of us. Did you know that fruit bats are the biggest in the world? Little bit of trivia..I didn't know that. Anyway, Mark points a bit away from us and says to the boys, "Look over there, there are a bunch of them." I am trying to get situated so that I can get a picture of the cluster of bats when I happen to look directly over-head. HOLY HERA! There were a TON of bats just over-head!!! We were going crazy -- after we discovered the ones directly over us, our eyes were swinging every which way, spying bat after bat after bat. They were EVERYWHERE! It was awesome :-) I think I took about 30 pictures of the bats. I realized that was a wee bit excessive and narrowed it down to 5, lol. I even got one flying...the trees are blurry and he might be a bit as well (those suckers are FAST flyer's..no time to focus, lol!), but damn it, I got it!
We spent hours at the gardens. Watching the groups of runners as they ran in their packs of fellow physically conscientious mates (apparently they are office workers who run in these groups on their lunch break), enjoying the view from the many vantage points along the way, and generally, just soaking up the absolute perfection of the day. We ate lunch along Circular Quay, which is like the main ferry hub. Matthew ate KANGAROO!!! Yes, he did! I knew it would be him first...he's been talking about eating kangaroo since we started planning this trip. He said it was good, I guess it's a little tough, but whatever sauce they had it sitting in, was quite delish :-) I was content with my hamburger -- they put a pepper relish on it, which I must say, it was so tasty I could have eaten a bowl of it with a spoon, lol!
We got back to our hotel around 4 to take a little break. I have been working on getting rid of this gnarly head-ache. I can't seem to get rid of it completely. And it fully blooms in the late afternoon, so I really needed the break. Around 6pm we all got ready to head back out. We were going to head over to Luna Park, which is like the Coney Island pier, I guess, with the rides, games, etc....We waited at the ferry stop for about 20 minutes, enjoying the night air, the moonlight on the water, and the lovely conversation with two fellow Americans, a father and son, who were on the tail end of their trip here. They were very nice, and it was fun to talk about the different places we have seen and compare notes. The ferry showed up and we all walked on board. Mark heads to the ticket lady and says that we want round trip tickets to Luna Park and back -- the lady gives him a look and says, "Okay, but Luna Park is closed." Aw, shoot!!! Ha, guess we're not going to be doing that! I was absolutely fine with it, I don't mind saying. I wasn't too keen on going anyway, my head was still hurting and don't even get me started about the state of my poor feet!
We are headed to the Blue Mountains this morning by way of the train. It should take about 2 hours to get there, but I can't think of a better way to end our adventure in Sydney! We leave tomorrow morning for Alice Springs on our way to Ayers Rock....another adventure begins, lol! OUTBACK!!!!!
A few observations from the boys have been: Surprise that Sydney is so big. That there are so many big buildings. The amount of Asian influenced restaurants. And the general business of the city has been a surprise.
I think they thought that all of Australia is more like Havelock, tiny and not too busy. Lol, they couldn't have been more wrong! Talk about a busy place! And the shopping! I've talked about it, right!? OMG....it's a far cry from Target and Walmart shopping, let me tell you!
Well we are off...Blue Mountains here we come!
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