Exploring icons

Not the best night…can’t get on with sheets as well as duvets! We had breakfast at home (smashed avo and tomatoes on toast a la Australian) and sorted out the washing etc then set off to walk into the city. Lovely to stroll through Darlinghurst’s streets full of terraced houses with wrought iron balconies, and we saw an open house for sales at one so popped in. Gorgeous in its own way and made the most of the space, although so stripped out and redone that it didn’t have any remaining character. We heard talk of an offer of $2.4m!
Wandered through Hyde Park with its beautiful cathedral of ficus trees and read about the history of the park around the renovation of the fountain. Popped into the Botanic gardens but we’ll visit again another day as we were headed to the harbour to get our bearings and let K see the Opera House and bridge for the first time. Had a good wander around the opera house, inside and out. Always amazes me how the exterior is two colours of ceramic tiles yet from a distance it appears white…the first time I saw it (some 23 years ago) I was quite taken aback at how cream/beige it looked up close. K struck by it not being as enormous as she’d thought, which was funny as for the last couple of weeks she’s talked each day about the huge size of everything in the country and how she can’t get used to the scale of the place.
We walked round circular quay to the Rocks area and explored the art galleries and the old streets, reading lots of plaques about the history of the area and going into a little museum. Fascinating stuff and learnt a lot about the early European settlers…arriving here around the time my house was built back home.
We stopped for a snack lunch at a little cafe and shared a club sandwich with kangaroo salami and mortadella a glass of wine (0% lager for me) and they brought a complimentary little brownie each for dessert….perfect lunch!
Walked on into the CBD, with a plan to try and find Australian animal charms for Kt’s granddaughters’ croc shoes. We weren’t on a mission but aiming for a particular shop meant we had a direction to wander, and we walked up some of the streets we’d been lost in with the car yesterday. Seems a more compact city than Melbourne…not sure, but perhaps more focal points to navigate through. We suddenly felt tired (we’d walked more than 18,000 steps!) so bought some stuff for supper and used the wonderful Moovit app to get info about getting home. Hopped on a bus and home in 10 minutes (it’s not far but we couldn’t manage the hills after all we’ve done today!) where we slumped for a bit then had spaghetti alla Norma for supper and watched another daft funny film and thought about what to do the next few days.