G’Day from Sydney, Australia!

This is the first of two stops in Sydney for us. Why two stops? We wanted to go to too many places in Australia/New Zealand 🙂 Our OneWorld ticket only covers 4 Oceania stops so we have had to use Sydney for our base for another stop in Australia (Perth). For now, here’s our first of two posts on Sydney.

We have had a fabulous time in Sydney! Here are a few highlights from our time here:

Sydney Opera House – The Proms
We were excited when planning the trip that our timing worked to see The Proms concert at Sydney Opera House. The Proms is the same concert series we saw back in July in London.

Given Australia’s link to the British Monarchy, Sydney often hosts a finale concert at the same time as London. The finale concert is extremely popular, and the concert consists of British patriotic music (think US 4th of July Boston Pops concert).

We were surprised to see the level of excitement for the concert! Concertgoers dressed up in British colors and several wore British flag dresses and shirts. In fact, we sat in front of the Queen. 😉 Also, people brought in their own streamers and confetti to throw during the concert!

The entire second half of the concert became a singalong to British songs. I was quite surprised to learn there are words to Pomp and Circumstance, and everyone knows the words! Rule Britannia was also sung several times – I have heard the song before, but didn’t know the words:

“Rule Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves! Britons never, never, never shall be slaves!”

We have to say this was the most enthusiastic and ruckus concert we’ve seen in an opera hall! It was a blast!

Taronga Zoo
While we often don’t head to zoos on vacation, we heard that Taronga Zoo is really nice and had a huge exhibit of Australian animals. Locals may not be as interested in the local Australian animals, but we certainly were! We actually skipped over most of the typical zoo animals and spent all of our time in the Australian area.

We couldn’t believe how close you could get to the animals! There were areas where you could go directly into an area with kangaroos, emu, and wallaby – with no gates between you and the animals! The kangaroos here were very calm, but we have read that kangaroos in the wild have been known to attack if they are surprised or scared. The emus were crazy – they paced constantly around the area!

There were koalas – and one was actually awake and moving around so we got some pictures.

We also got to see Tasmanian Devils, which are rapidly dying due to the spread of oral cancerous tumors. We also saw crocodiles (yikes – the ones here can be 10 feet long!), black swans, local penguins, and lots of colorful birds.

The real Tasmanian Devil!

The zoo has a really nice design and reminded us of the San Diego Zoo. You take a ferry across from Sydney and then catch a gondola that runs above the zoo to the entrance. The zoo then runs downhill so you have beautiful views over the Sydney Harbor as well as an easy walk down the hill for your visit!

Bondi Beach
Bondi Beach is one of Sydney’s most popular beaches. Since it’s early spring in Sydney, we weren’t expecting the beach to be very busy. We were surprised to see lots of surfers out in the water! We enjoyed a great lunch at a historic beach club and restaurant called Icebergs that opened when the beach first became popular in 1929.

The views and the food (more seafood!) were both fantastic! We finished off our time with a few kilometers of a popular coastal walk that had a series of rock cliffs and more beaches. It reminded us of La Jolla, California. I also believe that this is the inspiration behind Apple’s Bondi Blue iMacs of the late 1990’s 🙂

Food!
We’ve continued to enjoy the food in Australia! We have both been eating lots of seafood and have had several types we’ve never had before such as King Fish and Rock Fish.

We have also loved all of the passionfruit desserts. We’ve had a passionfruit banana cupcake as well as an awesome dessert called passionfruit Pavlova. It’s apparently a local favorite and consists of a meringue crust with cream that’s covered in passionfruit puree. It was delicious!

After our quick stop in Sydney we are heading to Perth in Western Australia to see the wild flowers and one of the fastest growing parts of Australia.