Posted February 12 at 12:40am local time.
Saturday, our first full day in Sydney, we had breakfast at a cafe across the street then headed to the mall a few blocks away to buy a SIM card to use our cell phone in Australia. After shopping around at the different carriers, we settled on the cheapest option and headed off through the drizzle to Darling Harbor. We spent the afternoon in the area and at the National Maritime Museum. The rain having stopped, we meandered through China Town that the evening and found an authentic Chinese restaurant for dinner (authentic according to my brother David who has spent some time in China).
On Sunday we did some bus hopping in order to attend church at the Christian Reformed Church of Sydney. We met a bunch of really nice people and were invited home by a man who, along with his wife, run a thrift store that donates all of its profit to the Bible League. We ended up spending the whole afternoon at their house enjoying their gracious hospitality and great fellowship. He even dropped us all off at the train station when we left.
We took the train to the Sydney Harbor Bridge and walked across. The bridge provides a great view of the city and of the Sydney Opera House. We wandered through The Rocks and over to the Opera House. It wasn’t as impressive as it always appeared in photos, but is still a very unique landmark. We stayed for the sunset then headed back by bus. A couple of stops before we got off a man in a brown coat tied closed with a thin green ribbon boarded the bus behind all the other passengers. Before the bus began to move he launched into some awkward form of a karate kata which he ended with a flourishing kick into the air. He then turned around and exited the bus, stopping outside to bow to us as we drove away.
Today we went on a tour with Sydney Tours-R-Us which included a stop at the Olympic Park, time in the Blue Mountains area, and a visit to the Featherdale Wildlife Park. They picked us up from where we are staying and at then end dropped us all off to catch the ferry back to the Circular Quay. We only spent about 30 minutes at Olympic Park, but it was interesting to drive through. One interesting fact told to us was that the Olympic Village was not built using any government money, but was entirely privately funded using a system where buyers agreed to lend their apartments out for the games in 2000. A brilliant plan that was well received and executed.
The Blue Mountains – named such because of the blueish haze covering the area caused by sun’s reflection off of oil secreted by Eucalyptus trees – is a magnificently beautiful area of forest-covered mountains. It reminded me a bit of the Great Smokey Mountains in the U.S. We went to Scenic World, taking a cable-car between two mountains and over Katoomba Falls. We climbed into the world’s steepest incline railway to descent into the rain forest below where we followed the winding boardwalk to the aerial cable car we rode back up. The area is privately owned because it used to be a coal mine. Scenic World also leases some land from the surrounding Blue Mountains National Park.
We had lunch in Katoomba and then drove to an overlook close to the Three Sisters – three rock spires extending from the mountain. We then headed back towards Sydney and stopped at Featherdale Wildlife Park. where we saw lots of living examples of Australia’s divers animal population, including the wombat, Tasmanian Devil, kangaroo, and koala. Our tour ended at the ferry back to the Circular Quay where we switched ferries and headed to Manly Beach for a great fish and chips dinner to cap off a great day in Sydney.