Love on "The Rocks"

Opera House by night
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What a beautiful city! Even though it's winter here, temps in this waterfront city are in the 70s during the day - though you'd never know it from the way the locals here are dressed - scarves, tall boots, wool sweaters. We think they just like having an excuse to wear winter clothes. Still, there are palm trees and lots of beautiful birds and flowers about, and we've been lucky to have perfect weather.

The city is really friendly to visitors - lots of public transportation makes it easy to explore by ferry, bus, and "city rail." As soon as we arrived we headed directly to 'Sailors Thai Cantine' for dinner - Stefanie had marked our guidebook "EAT HERE NOW!" and we obeyed. It had a long metal table across the entire dining room and people are all sort of eating together, some friendly, some less so. The food was delicious, hit the spot, since we haven't had any Thai food so far.

Our hotel is located on 'the Rocks', which is the historic center of town.

The emu. This bird was not shy, came right up to us and wanted the right of way.
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Our hotel is located on 'the Rocks', which is the historic center of town. There are two icons in the skyline here - the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge, and we were treated to the Opera House views from our room. Since we only had two full days in Sydney we were very ambitious. The first day we got up at 6:45 AM and headed out to a neighborhood called Darlinghurst (how cute!) for yummy "hotcake" breakfast. Incredible thick pancakes with ricotta lightly folded into the batter, topped with pats of butter so thick we thought they were banana slices. Headed to the Zoo on the north shore of Sydney harbor and the ferry provided magnificent views of the 'coat hanger' (Sydney Harbor Bridge) and the downtown as well as the Opera House. We were on a mission to see all things Australian at the Zoo, and we had a volunteer come with us and give us quite a tour through the native Australian flora and fauna. She was very enthusiastic and funny. Got to see kangaroos, wallabees, and lots of other cute fuzzy beings that hop on back feet, as well as the duckbilled platypus. Unfortunately all the koalas were asleep, as was the Tasmanian devil (who looked less then menacing curled up in the corner of the enclosure). Next headed out to the fishmarket for fish & chips, raw oysters, and views of big fish on ice. Came back to the center of town for a tour of the Opera House, which was pretty amazing but they won't allow pictures inside. Checked out Royal Botanical Gardens and had good old fashioned STEAK for dinner with Australian shiraz. Today we took the ferry to Manly, a beach town 30 minutes' ferry ride away. Gorgeous views, would love to return here sometime when the weather is warmer and swim in the Pacific ocean. We think many of our friends and family would love to visit here - beautiful climate, fun city, great food, friendly people. Tomorrow we're off to New Zealand...I should say at this point that Boris has unfortunately been practicing his Aussie accent, and I can't imagine things will improve in the land of the Kiwi!