We jumped back in the van and headed around Sydney. It was very interesting to see how spread out Sydney is. Of all the cites in Australia we've seen, this is msot similar to New York with urban sprawl stretching miles (or kilometers as it were) in all directions. Our last stop on the tour was Bondi Beach. It is a pretty popular beach area due to its promixity to downtown Sydney. It is pretty, but The water is cold and the beach itself has a very short break.
The tour overall was the worst that we have taken. It didn't really talk much about the history of Sydney and just jumped around and would give us a little chatter en route. It also was the most touristy. Luckily we only did the half day tour and got off the bus and wandered around Sydney shopping some. We decided to head to the Opera House in order to get our tour/dinner/show package tickets we had prepurchased
. It was fortuitous that we did this because the tour we had prebooked for no longer existed. Luckily they were able to convcert our reservation to a new tour. We went home and changed for dinner and took a cab back due to the sweltering heat. It had been super humid the whole time we were in Sydney. It a good reminder that California is the land of milk and honey whenever you are somewhere with worse weather (which is just about everywhere). Otherwise you definitely take it for granted.
The tour was awesome! Our guide was very knowledgeable but had a kind of obnoxious manner. She was like a high school thespian; overally demonstrative and excited about meaningless facts and figures. Her other problem was that every sentence LOUD AND then she slowly faded out until you couldn't hear her anym... I guess I should rephrase: the opera house is awesome and the tour was okay.
After the tour, we walked over to Cafe Sydney, which was one of the possible options for the prix menu we had bought a dinner/show package with the opera house. Once again we had a great dinner, we started with our new favorite food, more bugs in a salad. Then Megan had an amazing steak and I had a really good pork belly that I would have thought was amazing if I hadn't first tried Megan's filet. We had something chocolate and delicious for dessert as well as splitting a few sparkling wine drinks. We finished up and started walking back to the Opera house when I realized I had left my nikon slr at the table. I literally sprinted 3 blocks in a worry induced haze. Luckily they had set the camera aside for me and had someone waiting with the camera for me.
Megan caught back up and we walked back to the Opera house. Sprinting around had built my appetite back up and I got a sausage from a street vendor. It wasn't as delicious as I hoped, but I was full again for our George Benson show. We had heard his name before but hadn't ever listended to his music. The show turned out to be awesome. He was doing a tribute to Nat King Cole and sang a bunch of his songs before moving on to his own repetoire. The acoustics are amazing. To say that doesn't do justice to how awesome they are. Everyone says that but you have to be there to experience it. Most of the time at concerts they just blast the speakers so everyone could hear. Not the case at the Opera house - you could hear people on the other side of the concert hall like they were talking to you.
Benson was funny at times and moved easily through everything. At first everyone was a little subdued until his bassist urged everyone to get up. Soon there were people rocking out and standing all over the arena. He finished his set and walked off. One lady who had been rocking out hard in front of us starting screaming ENCORE ENCORE then realized perhaps this wasn't the venue for that. She turned around to Megan, kind of asking approval to yell more. Megan gave her a thumbs up and she went back to screaming encore! Benson came back for a few more songs before calling it a night. We walked back to our hotel and called it a night
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