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| Sydney skyline - with the Opera House and the Sydney Bridge |
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| super-sized lotus flower |
Ah, today is our second last day in Australia, it is hard to believe that we have been here 38 days! We only had two things on the agenda today - botanical garden and the Contemporary Art Museum. The botanical garden is huge and all their plants have been super-sized; especially if you were to compare to those in Canada, they are at least twice the size! The first thing we saw was the lotus flowers - they are bigger than a soccer ball and they are very pretty!
The succulent garden was interesting too. The cacti were SO big, and some of them looked like plastics. There were many spider webs too, and fortunately we did not run into any on the path. The body of the spiders was the size of my thumb; they would be bigger than a loonie if you were to include their legs. We also saw a native sting less bee nest on the side of a log and the bees were smaller than houseflies.
We spent the morning in the garden and had fish and chips by the pier for lunch. We missed the guided tour at the Contemporary Art Museum and ended up wandering around on our own. The exhibit was mostly native arts and most were the aboriginal representation of nature. There are also quite a few regarding the suppression by the Europeans. Since these are contemporary arts, it is difficult for me to grasp the true meaning / significance.
After the museum, David opted to complete the walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge while I went back to the hotel on my own.
We had booked the Bennelong Point restaurant at the Sydney Opera House for dinner. The Opera House is actually 3 buildings - one for Opera, one for concert, and the smallest for the restaurant. We did not get to see the inside of the other buildings, but assumed they were similar to the restaurant interior. During yesterday's walking tour, we found out somebody had scaled the biggest sail of the Opera House without any aid. While the buildings are covered with tiles, it is still quite an amazing feat to scale the nearly vertical wall of the largest sail. There was a performance at the Opera House and they lighted up the interiors with coloured lights - more Kodak moments for the photographers! Dinner was great, and my "chocolate cake from across the water" was extra yummy :)!
March 7 was a travel day. Our flight left for Hong Kong at a very civilized time of 11:25 and thus concluded our trip to Australia. We arrived in Hong Kong around 5:30 pm. We were planning to take the turbot jet to Macau straight from the airport, but the next one leaves at 10. So we took a bus to the pier in Hong Kong and took the hydrofoil over to Macau. It is a pain to get on and off the different 'vehicles' and going through customs, but we made it to the hotel in one piece.
In general, Australia is a great place if you like mother nature - the plants, the abundance of various creatures and the varied and expansive landscape. There is not much to say about the cities and the history, but the British influence made it quite similar to Canada. I must say the Aussies have the advantage on the weather, at least along the coast. The beaches are beautiful, and people are friendly and more lay back, and they sure know how to enjoy life!
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