The City of Stairs: Sydney Day 3

This morning we were up at 7:30. Gretchen went for a run to Darling Harbour, and I updated the blog for our first 2 days in Sydney. Upon reflection, I realized we have been way too busy, so we decided to stay in the hotel all day today and read gossip magazines. Of course not, we went up in the hospitality suite for breakfast at 8:30am and were out and about by 9:15. It was windy and overcast today – good thing we’d decided to leave our indoor activities until today.

I have not mentioned it so far on the blog, but it is more than a little weird to see all of the Christmas decorations all over the place when the weather is so warm. We saw a few in New Zealand, but once we got to Sydney, they were out in force. It just feels wrong. We got to Museum station, which is only a block from our hotel, and got on the train. I have also not mentioned this before, but the Sydney CityTrain is so much like the London Tube that it is not funny. There are endless tiled corridors underground between the turnstiles and the platforms, and they even use the same line-through-circle symbol for their station names.

It is more than a little weird to see all of the Christmas decorations all over the place when the weather is so warm.

We got off at Circular Quay and decided to buy a DayTripper pass, which costs $16 and gives unlimited rides on the trains, ferries, and buses, as well as discounts at a lot of the things we wanted to see today. After we got the passes, we walked to the Opera House and got onto the 10:00am tour, which was great because we got there at 9:55. Our tour guide, Nick, met us right on time and told us that we’d be going up and down a lot of stairs on the tour. This was when we realized that between the BridgeClimb, the pylon lookout, the Blue Mountains hike, and the Opera House tour, Sydney is a city of stairs. Nick asked me if I’d been at the ballet last night, because he said he’d seen either me or my doppelganger there. So either I have a twin out there or I am more active in my sleep than I thought.

Nick told us that the Opera House is on a prime piece of real estate called Bennelong Point, which I think you can all infer from the photographs you’ve seen, but you might not know that prior to the building of the Opera House, Bennelong Point was the place where out-of-service trams were stored. Appalling! The Opera House is clearly a much better use of space. The building is intended to be a piece of sculpture, so it can be whatever you want it to be, including sails, shells, waves, butterflies, birds, sinking ships, and so on. It was designed by an architect named Jan Utzon, who had no prior big project experience when he won the design contest over 250 other architects. As I predicted the other day on the blog, the people of Sydney were resistant to the design of the Opera House, which is not surprising since in 1959, it was the most radical design ever in architecture.

The Opera House actually has numerous theatres: the biggest is the Concert Hall, almost as big is the Opera Hall, and there are several smaller theatres on the lower levels. We went into the smallest one of these first, the 400-seat Playhouse, and Nick told us more about the building. The arches contain 28,000 tons of pre-fabricated concrete that was assembled on site, and they are totally self-supporting so there are no pillars in any of the theatres that would block the view. The entire cost of the project was funded by a lottery – the people of New South Wales love to gamble – that raised the necessary $102,000,000 in just 18 months. They do over 2400 performances every year at the Opera House, including opera, symphony, ballet, modern dance, stage plays, experimental theatre, lectures, symposia, and more. Nick told us that the Playhouse used to show surfing movies for free every Sunday, and the surfers would come up from Bondi Beach and Tamarama Beach to see the movies. They had to stop showing the movies, though, because the surfers would smoke pot right in the theatre lobby, and the smoke got into the ventilation system for the whole Opera House and gave the upscale clientele in the Concert Hall a contact high. The Opera House is very much part of the public life in Sydney. If I lived here, I would go every week.

We visited the 365-seat Studio theatre next. This is the most flexible of the theatres – the seats and stage can be moved into 9 different configurations including in-the-round. The walls are also adjustable to change the reverberation time in the theatre, so the sound can be just perfect for each different show. They use this theatre for experimental plays and dance, as well as for dance parties.

Finally, we visited the Opera Theatre, which seats 1550. The sizes of the backstage area and wings are limited by the size of the arches, so when they change the scenery, they lower the entire stage, change the set, and put it back up. There is space under the stage to store props and sets for up to 7 different opera productions, and there is space above the stage for 64 (!) different backdrops. The wings (i.e., the area just off to each side of the stage) are so short that occasionally, when there is a big ballet performance in this theatre, they need to employ people to catch the ballerinas as they fly off the sides of the stage! Wow. There is also an 85-piece orchestra pit that now has a net over it. Nick told us that the net was not always there – they installed it after an incident involving a production of Boris Goudonov, the head of the first violinist, and a live chicken. I’m sure you can fill in the blanks. They actually measure the strength of the net in terms of the number of chickens it could support, which is 50. Nonetheless, they don’t use live chickens at the Opera House since that day. While we were listening to Nick telling us about the Opera Theatre, we saw the stage crew setting up the theatre for The Nutcracker. Terrific! As we said goodbye, Nick told us that the finals of Australian Idol are happening at the Opera House on Saturday, so they are setting up a huge concert venue outside the entrance.

I have been on a lot of guided tours in my day, but this was one of the best I have ever been on, if not the best, and Gretchen agreed. Nick clearly loves his job and was totally tickled to show off the Opera House to us. I could have stayed all day! The Opera House is an amazing place. It would be great to see an opera, but unfortunately their season ended just before we arrived. Well, next time…who wants to go to Sydney with me sometime to see an opera?

After the wonderful tour of the Opera House, we walked over to the ferry terminal and hopped onto a ferry for Darling Harbour, which is farther inland from the Harbour Bridge and Opera House. On the way I got some more outstanding photos of the Opera House (I have about 100, but are there ever enough photos of the greatest building in Sydney?) and the Harbour Bridge, as well as the rest of the city. We met a guy on the ferry who’s from LA and is an architect for performance spaces…and he had NOT toured the Opera House. I know! People are weird.

When we got to Darling Harbour, we walked over to the Sydney Aquarium. I have been to the National Aquarium in Baltimore lots of times, but this one absolutely blows that one out of the water. Ha-cha-cha-cha! They had wonderful specimens from the freshwater rivers of Australia, as well as from the Great Australian Bight (the sea on the south side of Australia) and, of course, the Great Barrier Reef. Sure, we’d seen the real thing, but here they have special lights that make the fish and coral glow. I had to laugh because all over the GBR exhibit, they had signs saying “Find Nemo!” or “Find Nemo’s Friends!” They have really embraced that movie down here. We also visited the touch tank, which had starfish and sea cucumbers that we could pet. The highlight of the visit was the Oceanarium, which is an absolutely immense tank filled with huge fish including sharks. We were mesmerized by the sharks. There was a big glass tunnel right through the tank that the fish swam over and under while we watched. It was really, really wonderful.

After the aquarium, we walked past the Sydney office of Gretchen’s firm on our way to stop at that great American institution, McDonald’s, for a quick cheap lunch. $10 for 2 people is not bad for a whole day of food! Man, I love that hospitality suite. After lunch, we walked to the Sydney Tower, but the security guy told us that it was pretty cloudy and we might not see much. We decided to come back either tonight at twilight or tomorrow morning before we leave. At this point, Gretchen really wanted to go to see Manly, a beach suburb of Sydney, but I was a little too tired for a ferry ride and more walking around. I hate to say this, everybody, but I am getting sick. I know! Don’t worry, I will power through. I got some Cold-Eeze and am pushing the fluids. Anyway, we agreed to some solo time to explore. Gretchen ran for the 3:00 boat to Manly and I hopped back on the train to go to the Australian Museum, which is just down the street from our hotel.

The Australian Museum is tiny compared with the Smithsonian, but it was pretty nice. I particularly liked the “Skeletons” exhibit, which has just that: skeletons of all sorts of animals. I enjoyed seeing the skeletons of all of the animals I’ve been learning about since I got here. I had to laugh, because they had an exhibit called “The Bone Ranger” which was the skeleton of a man riding the skeleton of a rearing horse. I also got to see the Museum’s opal collection; opals are the official stone of Australia. They produce about 95% of the world’s opals. I also saw the “Welcome Stranger!”, which is a huge nugget of gold. I sped through the Australian insect exhibit (eww) and meandered through the Museum’s collection of Australian birds. I finished up by browsing the Indigenous Australians exhibit, which was very well done. It took me just over an hour to see the whole museum, and after that I went back to the hotel to wait for Gretchen. I decided to wait (guess where) in the hot tub! Ahhhh!,,,,or at least that was the plan, until I got up there and saw three hairy Australians where I was hoping to be relaxing with my Sour Skittles. Ugh! Time for plan B, a bubble bath in our ample corner tub. Ahhhh!…for real this time. Gretchen got back from Manly around 5:35pm and reported that it was well populated with surfers. Ahhhh!

I dried off and we headed up to the hospitality suite, where they had dumplings and bruschetta and brie and all sorts of good stuff. We also ended up in a discussion with some people from Surrey, UK, which I visited years ago, and one unfortunate chap from LA by way of north NSW Australia. Non-patenteers, tune out now. This poor fool is an inventor depending on capital from NSW inventors. I actually ended up in an innovation-versus-novelty debate with this kid. Honestly, I was trying to give good post-KSR advice, but he was insisting that anything novel in the US was probably patentable. Even Gretchen could see the holes in his logic – I mean, don’t argue against a girl who names her car after Justice Anthony Kennedy! – but in the end, we had to agree to disagree. OK Australian, in 2 years we will see who is right.

The highlight of the evening was some unexpected fireworks from the office buildings of Darling Harbour to celebrate the lighting of the Christmas tree. Woohoo! We came back to the room and fell asleep talking. Tomorrow is our last day in Sydney. Good Lord, I will miss this place. It is like nowhere on Earth. I absolutely must return here.