Saturday 29 January 2011

Sydney Day 1 Jan 29th

Today dawned a bit cloudy but with sun promised later, so we decided to head for Circular quay and to see the bridge and Opera house from the outside and visit an art gallery, also showing a big Annie Leibovitz photography exhibition. We had a fantastic time! We got completely carried away with the Opera house and went in for a tour. It is an amazing place, with stunning details throughout the interior, like the toilets with a wave like structure for booths and washbasins, and water that flows away to nowhere. Sorry about the reflection, didn’t notice it till we were reviewing the photos. The tour is excellent and well worth the money, giving you all the history of its construction as well as showing you all the different performing spaces and all the detailing. I had no idea it was so old, always imagining it to be a similar age to the Guggenheim in Bilbao.
In fact we got so carried away that we booked to go to see a show tonight, that came from the Edinburgh fringe festival, ‘Soap’, a gymnastics show set in and around a stage set of lots of baths, would you believe! And to top it all, we are going to see Sting on Monday night. Thanks for that kids, that’s what we are using my birthday money on.
We had a lovely picnic lunch on the edge of the Botanic gardens gazing out at the harbour, the bridge and the Opera house. Then off to the Museum of Contemporary Art to see the Annie Leibovitz photography exhibition. That too was brilliant, giving you a good overview of her life and work in a video, then a huge selection of her most famous photos. I have always admired her work, and it was great to see it A1 size or bigger, instead of the little illustrations you usually see.
Back then to the hotel to sort and publish all this, eat and get ready to go back out to the Opera house. Wow what a cultural day….and we had forgotten about all the street theatre that goes on around big cities, the unicyclist juggling a knife, club and flaming torch on his 10 foot high unicycle got our vote!   Photos here.

1 comment:

  1. Sounds to me that Oz was a big success apart from 'watching paint dry' at Ayres Rock! ;-)
    I was a bit concerned about the weather in Queensland what with floods and cyclones but judging by the pics, you had blue skies. Particularly like the 'reflections' one in SYD !

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