In love with Sydney

Granted I have only seen a small part of Sydney, but I have found it to be a beautiful, charming and fun city. I stayed in an old historic area called The Rocks that was walking distance to the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House and the Botanical Gardens. There was also an outdoor market with crafts, food, clothing, etc right down the block from my hotel.

Those of you who have done road trips with me might know that I am phobic about driving over bridges. But I really do love bridges, as long as I am on foot or bicycle. The Sydney Harbour Bridge is a beautiful bridge in and of itself, but the views of the city from the bridge are phenomenal. I had to walk across both in the morning and at night.

On my morning walk on the far side of the bridge I encountered the first Boston Terrier I have seen in Australia. His name is Winston.

I've never enjoyed looking at a building as much as I love admiring the mollusc like opera house. It is beautiful from most angles, in all kinds of light, at night.

I got in a good walk through the Royal Botanical Gardens.Here are some of the birds I saw::

Masked lapwing with chicks

White Ibis

Purple Swamphen

Sulfur crested cockatoo

I walked around four hours straight, as I had dropped my ultrastinky laundry at a cleaners. They even washed my trail runners which stank even more than the bag of clothes that I had hiked and ran in when up north in the tropics. It was not much more expensive than a laundromat would have been and it gave me more time to enjoy the city.