May 16, 2015, Saturday, Sydney

Our new segment itiinerary, Sydney to Papeete

We woke up early and looked out our cabin deck to see this sight as the sun was coming up.

We are docked at Circular Quay looking directly at the opera house.

Sydney lace is another name for the iron work balconies you see at the wharf area.  I didn't get a photo

This is one of the old buildings left among all the new modern construction that is Sydney.

Our tour took us around town to view important land marks before heading up to the Blue Mountains.  We passed by the Anzac bridge, 100 years ago was the battle.  It Has a New Zealander statue on one side, Australian on the other.

Anzac bridge

At the lookout over the blue mountains we saw the Three sisters rock formation clearly.

Three sisters from the lookout

We added a fourth sister

Close up of the first sister showing a bridge where someone daring can get to this rock formation

The mountains really do look blue

This is an Australian tree with flowers that look like ears of corn

The North Face 100K race finish line which was held that day.

We next went to Scenic World.  It is like a theme park for scenery.  The entrance was the finish of this 100k race.

Admission to the park gets you entrance to a scenic railway, the steepest passenger railway in the world.  and no seatbelts!

Before heading down

The original cars

A view up, taken from the bottom of the Scenic Railway

This is a tree fern seen on the Scenic Walkway

The scenic skyway had a glass bottom so you could look down onto the virgin forest below

This is taken from the skyway.  It is another spire only seen from this vantage

This is a view from the scenic cableway.

The scenery is all of the Blue Mountains and the Jamison Valley.  I can see why it deserves a theme park.

On our long drive back to the city, they showed us a movie about kangaroos and their behavior.  We saw a newborn baby which looked like it was still an embryo climb up the mother's front to get into the pouch where a teat was waiting.  It is instinctual that these blind babies can do this.

Back in town we drove past the Olympic Village and other sites

Olympic stadium

I love the Sydney harbor bridge, especially the New Years fireworks display.  So sorry we couldn't go on the bridge climb.  The excursion was cancelled.

Here are some photos of our ship leaving the harbor right at sunset.  What a view we had.

Luna Park

Downtown and opera house

People standing on the top of the bridge watching the sunset

Sunset view from our  ship as we left port.

City view

We watched the sunset until it was dark, about 6:00pm

A photo of the Smith family I recently got from Facebook.  Nice looking family!