Sydney's grand old "opry" House

Sydney, Australia - Day 2 (blogging from our hotel room)

14 hours, 14 smours...what an easy flight! All our praise goes to Qantas Airlines for a smooth flight, comfy chairs, decent food and great entertainment including plenty of movie choices and the Australian comedy hit soon to be Americanized, Kath and Kim...freaking hilarious. We touched down as the sun was coming up over Aussie-land. Customs was a breeze and the cab ride downtown was quiet in the early Sunday morning hours. We checked our bags at the Four Seasons Hotel. Before all the "well, la tee da"-s begin, it's not as fancy as you think. We are staying on a buy two get one free special and we have stayed in nicer places (I say Bellagio and Ashlee says Ritz Carlton). They promised us we could get in the room around 10 AM. So with a couple hours to kill before we could take a much-anticipated shower, we strolled around Sydney Harbor with very few people around. We met a nice couple from New Zealand who were "weekending" in Sydney and we each took the others' picture with the famous Sydney Opera House in the background. Just as inspiring as the Opera House is the Sydney Harbor Bridge. It's massiveness and architectural beauty are hard to ignore. Sydney is a beautiful city with tons of greenery and amazingly cool buildings and quirky little streets and alleys full of neat stores, eateries and pubs. After our morning stroll, we headed back for our showers and a short nap before venturing out again. This time we headed for the Opera House and stopped for lunch with a view of the Harbor Bridge. We roamed around the Opera House grounds and we were surprised to see it actually is composed of three different buildings and not one large structure as most of the pictures you see seem to indicate. We continued our afternoon walk around the Circular Quay of Sydney Harbor and finished with a stroll through the incredibly beautiful, incredibly large and incredibly FREE Sydney Botanical Gardens. Great first day in Australia ended with a pint of western Australian Pale Ale called Little Creatures and an interesting sparkling Grant Burge Pinot Noir Chardonnay (see our new wine and beer blogs) http://seerobsbeerblog.blogspot.com/ http://robandashleewine.blogspot.com/ consumed in our room with a view of Sydney's grand old "opry" House here on the other side of the world.