Day Twenty-One – Back in Sydney

We arrived back in Sydney harbour at around 6.30 this morning. It was dark as we sailed in so we couldn’t get any good pictures. Later on as the sun rose the view from our balcony was amazing as can be seen from the photo. We had an early breakfast but after eating so much over the last two weeks , just had cereal and coffee. The number of photographs that everyone on board took of the bridge and the opera house was staggering, and it makes you wonder how we all managed before digital media. A kind fellow traveller took this picture of both of us just prior to leaving the ship.  The process of disembarkation is quite involved,the previous night our cases are packed and left outside our room. All passengers are given colour coded tags dependent on the time you are due to leave the ship. The process worked very well with our call coming at exactly the predicted time. We were straight off the ship, picked up our cases and walked to our hotel, all in a 15 minute time span. Unfortunately unlike last time our room was not ready, but we were able to store our baggage before exploring Sydney.

We decided that as we had about 2 hours before our room would be ready, that we would walk across to the botanical gardens. From here one gets the iconic view of both the opera house and the bridge from the point known as Mrs Macquarie's Chair. It also gave us our first taste of Australian wildlife with exotic looking birds running on the grass and singing from the trees. The one sight that Sylvia was looking forward to seeing (but not me), was the  Flying Fox bats. We weren’t sure where these would be ,but suddenly came across them (and some were not sleeping!!!).

On our return to the hotel,the room was ready. Unlike last time we were in the newer part of the hotel, where the rooms were better although the views not so good. As we are here for a week we needed to unpack everything, so while Sylvia organised the wardrobes, I caught up with the washing in the launderette.  Later in the afternoon we walked into the city to look at where the main shops were located. Sydney is a very busy city and as it was lunch time the streets were filled with city types rushing around.  After 2.00 the pace slowed and we were able to stop and have a snack to eat. Rhapsody was due to leave the quay at 6.30 and we ,along with hundreds of people, decided to see her off. Unfortunately the sky had begun to cloud over as she pulled out by the opera house.

Tomorrow if it stays fine we will probably visit the zoo or if not we will continue exploring the city.