Australia : first stop Sydney

Coucou!

Comme John vous l’explique en Anglais, je me suis payé une journée au Spa et une coupe de cheveux...et n’ai donc pas pu vous raconter nos 2 jours et demi à Sydney ! Je vous promets que je me rattrape Jeudi. Après Melbourne où nous nous arrêtons demain, nous aurons 3 jours de navigation avant Perth. Je vous ferai 2 articles pour le prix d’un…

Pour vous faire patienter en attendant, je vous mets quelques photos « typiques » de l’Australie, histoire de vous allécher…

Au fait nous sommes Mardi soir et il est 22h25, nous avons 10H d’avance sur vous !

A Jeudi donc !

AND SYDNEY?

Mrs B is having a day in the COSTA health centre (saunas, Jacuzzis, massages etc) – all day for 30€ which really is an especially good price as concerns Costa – so why not? So today I am the first to start the blog writing exercise!

After 2.5 days in Sydney,  I can only say that I am even more positive about it than I was before we came – and for me Sydney was going to be one of the 2 or 3 highlights of our trip (along with Cap Horn/Ushuaia and the Chilean fjords). Really great!

We started the approach to the harbour around 10h30 on Saturday morning and we were moored in the bay just off from the Opera House/Harbour Bridge by 12h00. What a marvelous harbour, beautiful scenery, sail boats everywhere, parks and woods overlooking the sea….! It is very easy to understand why Captain James Cook pulled in here and decided to stay for some days/weeks and furthermore to claim it all for his king, George III (who, I hope, was eternally grateful!).

We had been told a day or so earlier that we would not be tied up to the quay in the harbour but moored out in the bay. Moreover the transfer between the ship and the town would be both by the ship’s own tenders (as has been the case in other ports) and by additional tenders hired by Costa. And – wait for it - there were to be 3 landing sites – one by the zoo, another by the Opera House and a third in the older Rocks quarter (Campbell’s Cove quay). We had all been warned – don’t get on the wrong transfer tender or you might end up on the wrong quay and miss your excursion etc! That morning I joined the queue for the transfer tender tickets (for those without excursions that afternoon). The tickets were to be handed out from 8am onwards (first come, first served for the earliest tender tickets) but when I joined the queue at 6am (yes 2 hours before the start of ticket distribution!), there were already a hundred or more in the queue before me! As usual our German “colleagues” had taken over the management of the queue and there was visibly a little less queue jumping/arguments than usual! There was even one nice German gentleman handing out cups of coffee to those queuing near him (including me)! As a result I got some very early tender tickets such that Mrs B and I were off the ship fairly soon after 12.45am and landed 15 minutes later on the Man O’ War quay alongside the Opera House.

We then walked into Sydney Cove harbour (right next to the Opera House) and the Circular harbour from which dozens of ferries are continually coming in from or setting out across the harbour or up the rivers to the outlying suburbs. Plus all the fast boat tours of the harbour and even a Celebrity line cruise ship tied up to the quay (apparently Celebrity rent the quay spot all summer long – in fact that first ship had left by early evening and there was another Celebrity ship in its place the next morning!!). And all around the quay, café and bistro terraces, shops, art galleries etc and many, many hundreds (or thousands) of very happy people, families, young folk, old folk etc of many different ethnic origins, enjoying themselves.

During one of my last trips to England I had bought a second hand guide to Sydney in the Oxfam book shop and that was the only guide book we had brought with us on the complete trip (an indication of how much I had been looking forward to Sydney!). It was extremely useful especially for identifying where we should go and how we should get there (on foot) around the port and the town centre. So we set off around the Circular Port towards the Rocks where there is the largest concentration (in the city) of the oldest buildings from the 1800s now fully renovated and being used as cafés, restaurants, shops, galleries etc. And being Saturday there was a street market so …..

After a superb ice cream in an ice cream parlour (our “weight watchers” mid-afternoon lunch), we set off down George Street towards the City Centre where we reached the Queen Victoria Building (completed renovated as a 3 storey shopping mall), the town hall and the St Andrew’s cathedral. From there we went looking for the Marble Bar (a “landmark bar” from the 1890s) which has now been re-erected in the basement of the Hilton Hotel (not such a good idea!). Then onto the Strand Arcade – another late 19^th century shopping mall – and Martin’s Place (the old Post Office) before wandering back to the port.

The Costa tenders back to the ship from Man O’ War stopped at 19h30 but the rented city tenders continued to operate throughout the night from Campbell’s Cove to the ship, once every hour. So we looked for a restaurant in the old 1830s Campbell’s Stores alongside the quay of Campbell’s Cove – although fairly “pricey”, their outside terraces were all full (one hour’s minimum waiting for a table – which is not our thing!) except for the Chinese restaurant where we got a table immediately. So banco for Chinese in Sydney on Saturday night. We each ordered a separate main course (octopus for me – lamb for Mrs B.) plus a “shared”  plate of vegetables (plus soup for me) and then understood when it all arrived that only one main course would have been more than sufficient for the 2 of us. It was very good – probably one of the best Chinese we have eaten for years. Apparently it is a long established restaurant because inside the restaurant there were dozens photos of “Chris”, the owner, with a multitude of stars with their handwritten messages and signatures going from Frank Sinatra (way back), a very “young looking” Cliff Richard to Mel Gibson and Sarah Ferguson!!

On leaving I asked “Chris” how many years ago Cliff Richard had come – he answered straight off “32 years ago – when I was still a young man myself!”.

We got the tender back to the ship and thanks to the open windows on the top floor, we got some super photos/film of the Opera House at night as we went by.

Next morning we had a “Costa” excursion (part of our cruise ticket).The tender dropped us off at a quay on the other side of the harbour – near the zoo. We then had a bus ride along the far side of the harbour, across the famous harbour bridge, around the town and then out to Bondi beach, south of the town centre. There was a “hurricane” blowing on the beach with sand, salt and sea spray but lots of young children were on the beach doing organized activities including life saving training with surf boards. I had expected something a bit like Copacabana beach in Brasil – but not at all. The town looks pretty rough/rundown (although Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman etc have houses out here), quite small, and not very scenic. If it were not for the fact that it is the nearest beach to downtown Sydney and is a “surfing heaven” (due to the gale like winds), I am not convinced that Bondi would be so well known.

Back into Sydney through other areas that I had wanted to see (by hazard) – including Kings Cross and Paddington (there must have been some convicts from London in the early days!) and down to Darling Harbour (another spot that we had wanted to go to). Darling Harbour is alongside the Rocks area but has been completely rebuilt – a bit like the London docklands. There is the Australian Maritime museum with both a functioning full scale replica of Captain Cook’s Endeavour, some 20^th century warships etc; the Sydney Aquarium, the Powerhouse Science and Technology Museum (in an ex coal fired power station) and other new buildings going up around the small harbour. We took a “rear paddle steamer” type cruise ship for a ride around the harbour but as lunch was being served to the Costa client “mob”, not many of the “clients” were very interested by the ride (they were more interested in seeing who could get their coffee first!).

Thereafter a guided tour of the Opera House including the main opera theatre, the second theatre dedicated to concerts etc. Very interesting (have an idea what it is like inside) but truthfully it is the external appearance of the Opera House with its unique roof that is the attraction (including being a UNESCO World Heritage site).

Then to the Botanical gardens and Mrs Macquarie’s Chair overlooking the bay, past Hyde Park (yet further memories of London). Thereafter we asked to be dropped off near the town centre so that we could walk back to the Circular Port, have another look in the shops and galleries (plus a beer and toilet) and get a tender back to the ship (we had had enough time in the bus and with listening to the guide!).

Next morning – up early (yes Mrs B can get up at 6am if motivated) to be ready for our 7.15am departure from the ship for the visit to the Blue Mountains (an optional excursion which we had purchased from Mr Costa). First stop was the Featherdale wild life park where we talked to parrots, Cassoways (?) etc, fed wallabies and kangaroos and had our photos taken stroking a Koala bear. Very pleasant and we could have readily spent all morning there but no .... we must get on our way to the Blue Mountains.

We were a little disappointed – we had expected to see “mountains” even if they were not blue. But no – the Blue Mountains is in reality a 1000m high plateau, heavily forested, cut by very steep and deep ravines and rivers and which originally blocked the spread westwards of the first Europeans in Sydney. Apparently 3 farmers “bribed” some aborigines to show them the way across the plateau and “open up the west”. Each farmer got a town named after him but it seems probable that the Aborigines did not get too much out of the deal.

Thereafter coal (and later even more valuable minerals) was found in the area and the mining industry started up. It is now a national park and mining has been stopped and replaced by tourism – either simple rides up and down the old very steep coal train track or cable car, longer hikes down to the bottom of the ravines or just “doing” the tourist shops in the nearby small town of Leura etc. Very pleasant but lacking in the “dramatic” scenery to which we are used to seeing in the Alps etc.

Lunch in the main restaurant of the local golf club – the Costa “mob” was fairly well behaved – maybe the context was for something – I don’t think the staff would have accepted their usual bad manners!!

Then the drive back to the city with a stop-off for photos at the 2000 Olympic Games stadium complex which is still in full use – very gentle “contemporary” music (of Chinese or Japanese origin) “piped in” around the outsides of the stadiums – I was impressed.

Back on the ship by 17h00 and she cast off from her mooring points at 18h00 precisely to the very moving and stirring sound of Pavarotti coming over the loud speaker system singing a very emotional farewell in Italian (the name of the song which has slipped from my memory- if I had ever known the title). (My “teacher’s streak” made me check john’s writing and he agrees for once to let me correct! It isn’t Pavarotti singing as the ship leaves the harbour, it is Andrea Bocelli and it is his well-known song which goes : “Con te Partiro…” I don’t know if it is the title of the song… Christine!!!) Once the ship was free of its moorings and the tugs and pulled away and the pilot boat was in place, the Deliziosa gave 3 blasts on her “horn” which were answered by the largest tug and we started sailing out of the harbour on our way to Melbourne.

Up until now apparently there were only 6 English or “neo-English” people on board – myself and Mrs B, an elderly very dignified gentleman (80+) who was a boss of a UK insurance company in Singapore for most of his life and his Chinese wife, a solitary Englishman who speaks with a soft S.African accent and one other “mysterious” person who we have not met (maybe it is the genuine direct descendant of Captain W. Bligh – not called Bligh – who apparently works for Costa in the 4D cinema). At Sydney 200 French passengers left the ship (the end of their part of the cruise) and only 20 “new” French passengers got on. Apparently the remaining 180 were replaced by UK subjects and in fact I now hear English being spoken on the decks. We will see what effect, if any, the UK contingent (with their natural queuing habits) will have on the overall behaviour of the Costa mob.

Arrivée dans le port de Sydney

 L'opéra et Harbour Bridge.

She is everywhere...!!!

John in his "crocodile Dundee"  hat! They forgot a T. to his name...

Et toujours le même Captain William Bligh qui fut après son expérience mouvementée de la Bounty, gouverneur de Sydney. 

Sydney by night!

Gentil petit Koala qui voudrait bien dormir...

Un Cassoar avec sa drôle de tête!

Je ne vais pas pouvoir dormir...Encore des Costaïstes...

Normalement je dors 20H par jour...

Prudence, qu'est-ce...???

C'est doux...

Mais attention aux dents...

Moi j'ai un bébé dans ma poche...et elle?

Les "Three sisters" au fond mais on n'en voit que 2!

Voilà les 3 soeurs dans les Montagnes Bleues. Elles ne s'appellent pas Marie-Christine, Catherine et Dominique mais pourquoi pas...???