Thursday, May 31, 2018

Ten of our group left for home today.  We met the Crouch family, Sadie, Hadyn, Jerry, and Steve in the lobby this morning around 8:30 to tell them all good-bye.  They are headed to the airport for their 12:30 p.m. flight to Dallas which will take approximately 14-15 hours and get them home at 1:00 p.m. on Thursday.  It will be a very long Thursday for them.   Right after they left Barbara, Clarence, Wonda, Sam & I left the hotel to walk through Hyde Park to St. Mary’s Cathedral.   It was very pretty inside.  Then we made our way back down the street to the “Big Bus” bus stop to make our way to the entrance of the Royal Botanical Gardens.  Oh my, I could have spent days in the garden.  I think every type of flower, bush, and tree was in there.  Since it is autumn here there are trees that are deciduous and are nearly bare with falling yellow and orange colors.  But there are also evergreen trees and palm trees and still many green leafy and flowering trees.  It’s quite amazing to see them all together all over the city.   It is quite a large area but easy and nice to walk in.  We were headed through it to Mrs. Macquaries Point, a point of land jutting out into Sydney Harbour where one can see both the Opera House and the Sydney Bridge.  Clarence and Wonda decided to walk all the way to the point but the rest of us stopped just short of it because we had already taken several pictures of the building and the bridge across the water and because Barbara just wasn’t feeling well.  She has been suffering from a head cold or sinus problem nearly the whole time we’ve been gone.  After that we walked back through the park a different way until we came to the backside of St. Mary’s.  It was a nice walk all along the Gardens and then a park.  Since we were so close again to the bus stop we headed back there to catch the “Big Bus” blue route to Bondi Beach.   I was surprised to see that the entire way to the beach was still city.  I thought we might go through some countryside.  It was little town right after little town without any visible type of separation.  Rising over a little hill we suddenly saw the ocean right in front of us and then we turned a big curve to head down to the town of Bondi and there was the beach.  There was a awesome half-moon shaped area of white sand with big white waves in the blue water.  Reaching our stop we got out of the bus to face strong winds blowing in off the ocean.  Today’s high temp was supposed to be around 18 Celsius with a wind-chill of 7 Celsius.  It was cold!!  Up along the road was a long row of shops.  We ducked into Hungry Jack’s for lunch.  The menu had Whoppers, fries, cokes,……all just like a Burger King but with a different name.   Sam got a burger with bacon on it.  The bacon was Canadian bacon.  I decided to try an Aussie burger.   It was just like a Whopper but with a fried egg and sliced beets.  Interesting taste. The whole front of the store was open to the beach and we kept being visited by big gray pigeons who would fly in, land, search for food, and fly out or be shooed out by someone.  We then pushed through the wind and cold to go down closer to the beach mainly to get better pictures.  There were more shops and some restrooms there.  We didn’t stay too long as it was so cold. Yet there were still hardy, wet-suited surfers out in the water.  Finding a place out of the wind we waited close to the bus stop until the bus arrived.  Then we made our way back to the place where we needed to get off close to the hotel.  It was right across the street from the Australian Museum so Barbara went there   Wonda and Clarence headed off across Hyde Park to try to find the big mall that Steve and Jerry had talked about.  Sam and I went back to the hotel.  About 5:30 Sam & I headed back out to the nearby train/subway station to go down to the wharfs.  This time of year Sydney has a big light show that lasts for about a month.  The Sydney bridge is lit up and many of the downtown building are lit.  The Opera House is lit with different colors.  I guess there are all kinds of concerts and activities also.  We got to the wharf area intending to take a ferry out into the bay but decided not to do that as we could see pretty much all we wanted to by just walking around.  We ate supper there at a place called City Extra and then joined the masses of people on the wharf.  After eating a little gelato we made our way back to the train and back to the hotel.  Now time to pack for our return flight tomorrow.