{"id":493,"date":"2006-06-06T00:01:22","date_gmt":"2006-06-06T08:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/?p=493"},"modified":"2006-12-28T09:27:41","modified_gmt":"2006-12-28T17:27:41","slug":"first-stop-circular-quay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/?p=493","title":{"rendered":"First Stop: Circular Quay"},"content":{"rendered":"

On my first full<\/em> day in Sydney, I planned on going on one of those harbor tours. They have these boats that do nothing but circle around the huge Sydney Harbour, from Darling Harbour to Circular Quay, from Circular Quay to Watson’s Bay, from Watson’s Bay to Taronga Zoo, and all the way back to Darling Harbour. I had a ticket for the Rocket Harbour Cruise, so I could ride it all day from stop to stop, and the departures at each stop were an hour apart, so I’d have plenty of time to sightsee at each stop before having to leave again.<\/p>\n

Now, had I nothing else to do that day, I might have seriously gotten a full day of seeing a whole lot more than I did. But as it was, I spent that morning getting my photos burned to DVD and buying some things to clean my camera. After that I had a quick and early lunch. So I missed the 9:30 am and 10:30 am departures at Darling Harbour.<\/p>\n

I caught the 11:30 instead and was whisked away to Circular Quay.<\/p>\n

Circular Quay is where you’ll find the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which is a must see if you ever find yourself in Sydney. More on that later, but for now here’s a photo of it from the boat:<\/p>\n

\"Sydney<\/p>\n

The quay is where you’ll also find the famous Sydney Opera House and the Royal Botanic Gardens. I didn’t have time to explore the gardens, but I did climb up the stairs for a bit to get a better view of things. As for the opera house, here’s a shot from the boat:<\/p>\n

\"Sydney<\/p>\n

And here’s a shot of the steps from outside:<\/p>\n

\"Sydney<\/p>\n

And of one of the rooms from the inside:<\/p>\n

\"Sydney<\/p>\n

I got a lot of nice shots from the inside, along hallways and on the numerous steps, but none of the theaters themselves. They’re copyrighted, so we’re not allowed to take photos from inside any of the theaters. The architecture is amazing, all designed by a guy named Utzon, and the interior shot above is from inside the Utzon room.<\/p>\n

After seeing the opera house, I ran back to the dock to catch the next departure of the harbor tour, but I missed the one I wanted and had to wait for the next one, so I wandered around on the quay and took some photos.<\/p>\n

This one is of the Museum of Contemporary Art (on the left), the Sydney Harbour Bridge (in the background), and one of the many different kinds of boats that cruise the harbor:<\/p>\n

\"Museum<\/p>\n

I noticed a bunch of multi-colored bears in front of the museum, so I wandered over there and discovered the Unicef bears<\/a>. Bear sculptures were given to every participating country, and an artist from that country would paint the bear, and the bear is then put on display with other bears from other countries.<\/p>\n

\"Unicef<\/p>\n

I searched and searched and searched some more, but I couldn’t find the U.S. bear. I found Australia, Canada, some African countries, France, the Philippines, and a bunch more, but I couldn’t find U.S.<\/p>\n

Here’s the Australian bear, though:<\/p>\n

\"Australian<\/p>\n

And after that, I got on the boat to see the other stops on the tour.<\/p>\nShare this post:

\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"tumblr\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"tumblr\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On my first full day in Sydney, I planned on going on one of those harbor tours. They have these boats that do nothing but circle around the huge Sydney Harbour, from Darling Harbour to Circular Quay, from Circular Quay to Watson’s Bay, from Watson’s Bay to Taronga Zoo, and all the way back to Darling Harbour. I had a ticket for the Rocket Harbour Cruise, so I could ride it all day from stop to stop, and the departures…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aprilgem.com\/log\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}