Oh what a busy day, spent the evening before looking in to going to the opera at the opera house To discover it was a minimum of $105 each to sit outside in the car park and watch through the window. But we had a plan.

Strolled in to Sydney through the Botanical Gardens where one of the highlights is the Wollemi pine which has been around since the dinosaurs and was thought extinct until someone found it in his back yard or something. With the excitement building we sidled over to the spot, dodging the crimpolines on the way, looking for a real man of a huge pine tree at least 200ft tall. What did we find? Last years last Christmas tree that not even the home for orphans would want, a piddling little runt of a tree not even it’s mother would love.

Deflated we moved on heading towards the shore line when suddenly we thought we were Tippi Hedron as dozens of large birds flew over us screeching and landed in the trees above us. Then we realised these were bats. MASSIVE HUGE bats that fly in the daytime, loads of em coming in across the park, amazing sight! this made up for the tree!

Our next encounter with strange flocks was along the water front near some woman’s chair made of stone (I’m sitting in a pizza shop writing this in small town Oz, I ain’t looking it up) we were quite impressed and  slightly moist as we noticed that fit runners kept passing us, then we noticed this wasn’t stopping and was in fact getting worse then you notice that everywhere you looked were joggers, jogging, everywhere. some were obviously doing it cos they really needed too, some where there cos they were just showing off and some were topless! hurrah for the topless boys running. but then it started to get a bit annoying, they were everywhere, constantly running, you’re taking a picture, 6 people run past, you get to a set of steps in a park, there’s runners doing circuits. we were worn out just oggling! they’ve obviously had too much sun.

we noticed that there weren’t any fat people, and everyone wore their shirts a little bit too tight and to cap it all off we kept seeing gays. such a relief after 10 days in the wilderness to be in a city environment where the gays roam freely.

we made our way to the opera house which looked stunning, we were really impressed close up to it seeing the different surfaces and the interaction between them. its quite brutal in concrete throughout with stone mix cappings on some surfaces and very occasionally a bit of carpet. mostly inside it looks like a multi storey car park and if the tiles on the outside were yellow you’d swear blind you were in the Arndale.

At the box office we put our cunning plan in to action by asking for really cheap tickets from a lovely man behind the glass screen, quick flash of the gay card and we were in. $44 for standing tickets in the full knowledge that as soon as the lights went down we’d be in seats costing $105. we read it in the lonely planet guide book.

we rewarded ourselves by splashing out on overpriced food at a pretentious venue and the cafe at the side of the Opera House fitted the bill. only $14 for a pizza and Nelly had Oxtail pasta, who knew oxtails had so much fat in them. i thought they were all hair.

for our afternoon we decided we’d have a tour of the harbour, not the posh way on a guided tour, we caught the ferry to Manly, $13 return. 30 minutes on the boat, free wifi, no annoying comentary but still lots of Japanese tourists, still in their hi viz jackets and manga outfits, quick look at Manly beach, no surfers, and back on the ferry again. home in time for a quick change in to our going out outfits that had spend the day hangng in the wardrobe with no hanging space (so were still a bit crumpled at the bottom) as we were off to see La Boheme. My first opera and at the most iconic opera house in the world all for $44 and we may even get to sit!

Well we did get to sit and the performance was excellent, she did indeed die at the end. from a cough, which was strange. never a fisherman’s friend when you need one. Inside the opera house is cooly retro and quite warm for a car park, tho that could have been the warmth from our $44 smugness sat way up there in seats J17 and J18.

finished the evening in style in a ride in a chauffeur driven carriage home. $2 each on the 325 bus, then spent $7 on a packet of TimTams (penguins but nasty) and a Lemon Bitters drink.