off to OZ - day 15

Tuesday, 06.11.12 - It is really weird to sleep in a hotel... Instead of nice birdy chirps we hear suitcases rolling and so on. Well. We get up early, take some slices of toast, left over from the journey, and a nescafé and leave again towards Darling Harbour.

We walk through the Botanic Garden, pass famous Sydney Opera House, upstairs, downstairs to Circular Quays. Today we want to be a little lazy and take a 2-hours harbour tour. On our way we face lots of people in full feather - is there an opera ball??? Hey, it's midweek - what's all this fuss about? At the end of the day we know the reason: It's Melbourne Cup. Nothing to do with sailing but a 3-minute-horse-race. Because they are Commonwealth the Aussies do like in Ascot: Extraordinary hats, party at the harbour and at noon already a little drunk from prosecco. At Victoria the whole state has a day off - public holiday because of a horse race of 3 minutes.

However. We wonder while walking through the city with a grin on our faces. Everyone is in good temper, sun is shining and it's warm. We've got a little feetache from yesterday and therefore do a more comfy mode, take a sandwich at Pitt Street (kinda spacy: there's a bistro in the basement of a financial-/insurancies house; not bad at all and not as expensive as expected), we have a look at a really small part of the town (and do not manage 'The Rocks') and then take a rest before starting to our harbour tour at Circular Quay.

And then we go. Two hours of tourist ferries with coffee and cookie. It is fresh (!) on the water, the host spends sunmilk and we're astonished about the harbour's size. The harbour actually consists of several little harbours, bays, rocks etc. The whole time we do not see any bird unless the cookies are offered - seagulls have good watches, I guess ;) I take pictures and pictures and pictures until the batteries are empty. So we have no pics from our way back to Circular Quay. What is a pity because they would have been nice with a dramatic dark heaven from the arising thunder storm.

[Don't panic, not all of the pics in the gallery ;)]

A little frozen we arrive at Circular Quay. Again a sandwich and we sit down on a bench, watching people. The dark clouds get bigger and we hurry up. But in the end besides a little thunder there has nothing happened.