Sydney Part 1 - Tuesday 5th - Thursday 7th Jan

Handley:

Tuesday:
Landed in Sydney and saw Edith Bowman at the airport, well we think it was her.  Michelle spotted her and said is that Edith Bowman and I shouted quite loudly nah that woman looks too young to be Edith she looks all haggered on the TV.  Upon closer inpection of the lady and her group dynamics with her entourage I think actually it was Edith Bowman so apologies for possibly insulting you!  If anyone can confirm that she's in Sydney at the moment please let us know.

As soon as we got to the accomodation we dumped the bags and did what you should do when first in Sydney we went to the harbour bridge and the opera house.  We had a beer in the opera house bar and took in the sights - living the dream!

I was slightly taken aback by the fact that the opera house is beige not white like it looks in all the pictures, but still very impressive!

Wednesday:
Today we visited Taronga Zoo which is just a short ferry ride across the harbour.  We really enjoyed it there were loads of cool animals to see including a baby elephant. Not sure what else I can add really as it was as you'd expect a zoo to be other than it's known locally as the zoo with a view as there were some incredible views back over to the city.

Thursday:
As we are here for a few days we invested in a Sydney Pass which is much like the muni pass in San Fran it gave us pretty much free reign of all the public transport Sydney had to offer and also included unlimited access to a couple of tour buses, so today we hopped on the Sydney Explorer bus to get to see more of the city.

We jumped off in the Rocks and had breakfast in the Rocks Cafe (thanks for the tip Zoe). We then headed up the pylon of the harbour bridge to get some great views of the opera house and the city and waved some people doing the full bridge walk, which was quite frankly out of our budget!

Next stop was a ferry over to Manly, named quite literally after the 'manly' aboriginals that the early settlers came across in this area.  We visited Oceanworld in Manly as we had a discount voucher and I really have to say it was shit, apologies for the swearing, but honestly it was complete and utter bobbins.... Tropical World in Leeds is a million times better!