Sydney by foot

Wow, yesterday was very busy. It's a miracle my feet survived. I took a subway to the Botanical gardens, then walked across them to meet Jane, the Servas woman I'd written to.

She turned out to be a lovely person (the 71 meant the year she was born, not how old she was) who's also an ESOL teacher. And, amazingly enough, her dad produced a TV special on platypuses that was sponsored by National Geographic...she's going to try and put me in contact with the team in Melbourne that did all the research and photography for it. Small world!

I met Jane at the Art Museum of New South Wales, which was having a small but very interesting show of OLD photographs. There were processes I'd never heard of, and the photographs were really interesting.

After that, I walked across the Botanical Gardens to the harbor and then to an area called The Rocks, which is where the original convicts were housed. The people who were free settlers lived on the clofs (Rocks) above them, to avoid the small and mixing with the masses. It's a little like an historical Georgetown, Australian style with old buildings and interesting shops, and views of the bridge and occasional glimpses of the harbor.

I then walked back down to the harbor, grabbed a sandwich. Ate half the bread and fed the seagulls the rest, and walked over to the opera house to see Pinafore and Trial by Jury. The setting was an old steamer. The cast was good (I don't if they're the actual Opera cast or just in for that show ...the program was $15, and my need to know wasn't that great). They played the whole thing in a slapstick way, which is something I'd never seen before...interesting but weird.

Walked back to the subway along the gorgeous night lights of the Sydney Harbor, caught the train, and then came out of the station at the wrong exit and got lost. Egads, alone on the street at night. Anyhow, I stopped at a pub, got directions, and carried on


thought today my feet would be killing me, but so far they're not. I hope to get to the zoo, which allegedly has a great collection, including some , well, you know.

I'm going to try to find out how to get to the zoo (some ferry but I don't know which) and make reservations for a bus to the Blue Mountains tomorrow. This means that tonight I'll probably start packing up because on Thursday we leave for Auckland, and last time we got socked for 50lbs overweight (not on any of the other airlines) but I can't think of what to jettison.