Sydney Day 2 - Opera, City Tour and Sightseeing (Australia Part 30)

In the morning, we walked through the botanical garden, one of the oldest public parks in Australia, which attracts locals and tourists with its large green spaces and many paths.

From there, we headed to the opera house, which we wanted to see from the inside after seeing the views from the water yesterday.

For this, we booked a guided tour in German, as our tour guide later explained to us that you can only go to the restroom for free in the opera house. However, with the tour, we were able to visit the performance rooms and foyer and learned a lot about the history of the building.

Afterwards, we went through the botanical garden again because now the greenhouses were open. We visited an exhibition of carnivorous plants that were waiting for their prey in large numbers.

In the afternoon, we joined a free city tour (I'm free), where you give a tip at the end.

Fortunately, our tour guide had a loudspeaker for amplification, so we could hear her well despite the noise of the city.

St. Mary's Cathedral

So we learned that the architect Francis Greenway, who designed many old buildings in the city center, was a convicted embezzler and bankrupt. He was depicted on the old 10-dollar notes, which is strange considering the reason for his conviction...

We bought our dinner at a snack bar at the harbor: typical fish & chips. We sat on a bench overlooking the harbor. Unfortunately, we were not the only ones who had a craving for fries: Several seagulls and some ibises gathered around us, especially the ibises were cheeky. So we had to guard our food well and quickly put anything that left the box into our mouth. An ibis even sat on the bench and tried to steal a fry from the fork...

Afterwards, we took a sightseeing tour with the BigBus through the city center and were able to see some other corners and things from a different perspective.

Harbour Bridge

Because we wanted to see the evening light show on the opera house's rooftops, we sat in a bar in the district 'The Rocks' to be able to comfortably observe it from inside (in the evening the wind was already cold).

However, we had to enjoy our cocktail with a view of the opera house without the light show - it could only be seen on the other side of the opera...