Day 38: The Sydney Opera House

The Sydney Opera house, perhaps one of the most iconic Australian landmarks. Others that come to mind: Ayers Rock, The Great Barrier Reef, and Kangaroos.

The walk from the hostel to the opera house is about half an hour, but I was fortunate enough to be able to walk through the Royal Botanical Gardens. Probably the best way to travel. The gardens stick out from the mainland into the harbor, so this was where I got my first view of the opera house.

The sun was right in my eyes of course, but it was still spectacular. Finally after all those images of Sydney Harbor, now I could finally see it in real life. The opera house is a lot like the colosseum in Rome. It's the thing everyone knows about, it's full of tourists, but it's still really awesome, and you'd be a fool to miss it. I thought it might be a little underwhelming after seeing images of it my whole life, but I was very wrong. I couldn't stop looking at it. The design is so unique and interesting, I've never seen anything quite like it. It's both modern and classic at the same time.

I continued past the opera house along the edge of the harbor. I walked through the warf, where there are a bunch of ferrys to various places. My goal was to get to the harbor bridge though. Walking across that bridge gave me a great view of the harbor, including a great aerial view of the opera house. And when I walked back over the bridge, I got a great purple/orange sunset sky too.

As the sun went down I found some dinner near the wharf. I got another pepperoni pizza, this time I got the side of french fries. The waitress warned me that it is big. But I told her I was hungry enough. Turned out, I wasn't hungry enough. The bowl of french fries was enormous. I couldn't finish it and the pizza. But I was still happy to be full at the end of the day.

Also something I should point out is that the sun goes down at around 5pm here. Compared to the 10pm sunset in Ireland a few weeks ago, it's really strange to get used to.

After dinner I had my first amazing Pokemon Go experience. I know you're probably tired of hearing about it already, but this is the first time I'm in a country that has wide access to the game. People were flocking to the opera house tonight in search of rare Pokemon. An entire crowd of people, and pretty much everyone was playing the game. In all my years of having a smartphone and playing games, I've never seen anything quite like this.

I have nothing against the game, I actually think it's a great thing. It brought all of these people outside tonight for one thing. But something I really like about it, is that it labels many landmarks within the game as Poke-Stops. If it weren't for these markers, there are a lot of small things that I would easily miss. For example, along the walkway leading up to the opera house, there are multiple plaques commemorating many famous writers that had some relationship with Sydney. The game has done a lot of this for me, pointing out small things that I would have otherwise missed. So for that I am thankful.

I promise to not talk too much about Pokemon Go from here on out, I just had to mention that.

Unfortunately they close the gardens at night, so I had to go the long way home. But it's probably for the best anyway, better to walk on a lighted city street than through the dark public garden.

That's about all I got for you today, but check back tomorrow and I'll have something more for you to read.

Until then, thanks for reading and here's to tomorrow!