The Opera House is a splendid edifice, but my heart belongs to the Harbour Bridge

 

The Opera House is a splendid edifice, and I wish to take nothing away from it, but my heart belongs to the Harbour Bridge. It's not as festive, but it is far more dominant – you can see it from every corner of the city, creeping into frame from the oddest angles, like an uncle who wants to get into every snapshot.

The title for today's blog is an edited version of Bill Bryson's quote above. Writing in his book Down Under in 2000, he makes the point about the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge which is so fitting for our action today, where both play a large part.

Morning

I get up at 6.30am and edit and upload photos from Tuesday, meaning we are almost caught up. Drew wakes at 8am (which is 6am in Perth, where we were yesterday morning) and we do our ablutions before heading down to breakfast at 9am.

Laundry

The first order of the day today is Laundry. I'd identified Laundrlab as being close to the hotel some months ago. It is very close, and an easy walk. 

Given we have used all the clothes we have with us, expect the ones we are wearing we need two 10kg machines to comopelte the wash. Each takes 24 minutes and the price $8 (£4) includes washing detergent. 

When the wash is complete it is into the drying machine, an extra size one at 20kg for 36 minutes and $12 (£6). A very reasonable price and a very simple process. 

Over the years, launderette visits have become part of our social engagement with local communities - sadly this one in Sydney, being perfect for its prime function, doesn't have any one, local or otherwise, for us to chat to this morning. 

With all our clothes clean and dry we leave Laundelab at 11.30am and walk the six minutes back to the hotel and hang up the clothes in the wardrobe. It will be in Ballina before we do out next wash.

Into Sydney City

We leave the hotel at midday and head down towards the harbour. 

This was our route: 

Following Google's advice, instead of walking down the main road, we walked down Brougham Lane along the side of the hotel. Were we glad we did, that side wall fo the hotel has an amazing range of street art along it. See the images below:

Walking further down through the area known as Woolloomooloo we arrive at the bay and the naval docks. A short walk from here, via a complicated set of stairs that takes you around the major highway in this area, we came to the Royal Botanical Gardens, an expansive parkland area with a whole variety of plants, walkways and other sites. 

Harbour Bridge and Opera House

Walking south through the park we come to the iconic Sydney Opera House. Time and again you see images of this building when Sydney is mentioned or is on the news. Now here we are standing in front, beside and underneath it. It's architecture is distinctive and fascinating. You can read more about it here.

However, as I said at the beginning of this post, the thing that draws the eye most in this part of the city is the Sydney Harbour Bridge that hovers above the eye line, and draws you to celebrate this great feat of engineering. As we can see both the bridge and the opera house from our hotel room, they have come to symbolise Sydney for us. But it is not just us, they clearly have this role for many people who visit this amazing city. 

Across the Quay

While the two iconic city images are a very important part of our visit, we wouldn't be us if we also didn't want to see the less travelled routes and our city guide had suggested going to the other side of Circular Quay.

First though a little rant about the quay's name. For it to be circular it would have to reach out into the harbour. It isn't circular as one quarter of the circle is water, not quay - Horseshoe, U shaped, Convex even Gibbous all would do, but not circular!! - Rant over

The other side of the Quay includes the area called The Rocks, Campbell's Stores, Dawes Point and Mr Camden Cottage all well worth visiting as you see the emergence of Sydney Cove into Sydney Harbour, a rich and multi-layered urban geography being created and re-created in successive generations. The Museum of Contemporary Art is also in this part of the city. It is from this point that it is possible to walk up on to the bridge - though, due to road works, this access was not available today - Drew's vertigo was very happy about this!!

Walking further around the coast brings us to Walsh Bay, another former wharf area in the harbour, now a centre for the visual, audio and creative arts and a cutting-edge performance precinct.

We stop for coffee at the Sydney Dance Company building. An interesting space with lots of dancers and a few non-dancers, like us. The coffee was very good.

The route from Walsh Bay leads to Barangaroo Reserve another city park. Alongside Barangaroo is the The Lord Nelson Brewery Hotel 

and from there it is a short walk up to Observatory Hill Park, with its own wonderful views of the city, the harbour and the bridge.

Walking down from the Observatory we catch the Bus 311 which runs all the way from here in Argyle Street to Potts Point on a somewhat scenic route around the city. 

We arrive back just in enough time to wash and change ready to head out for dinner. But the details of that will have to wait for another post.