The Opera House

 Friday, December 22, 2023

This was our final morning in Sydney before boarding the Majestic Princess for our 14-day journey to/around New Zealand.  We were up at 6 a.m. (for a vacation, our days have sure started awfully early so far), finished packing up everything, put our bags outside our room and went down to breakfast just after 6:30 a.m.  By 8 a.m. we were in the lobby and getting us and all the luggage on the bus for our city tour of Sydney before being dropped off at the ship.

The highlight of the tour was our 50-minute private tour of the Sydney Opera House.  What a fabulous piece of architecture and so iconic!

Sydney Opera House

The opera house actually contains at least three different theatres.  The largest (concert) hall holds around 2700 people.  We got to go into the main concert hall as well as the Joan Sutherland Theatre which is home to the Australian Opera Company and the Australian Ballet.  

Main concert hall in Sydney Opera House

Our guide Nick (gentleman standing in the above photo) explained that the walls, floor, and even seats in the concert hall are all made of wood to help distribute sound without echo or reverberation. Currently the hall is home to a Christmas show called "Circus" which doesn't have live animals but some type of human puppet creatures, including elephants! the large magenta disks above the stage are sound disks/baffles, again for help in distributing sound throughout the hall.

Tiled surface of the white "wings" of the Sydney Opera House

The iconic wings or domes of the Sydney Opera House are actually prefabricated concrete, covered in tiles of white, cream, and champagne (not all white) that reflect light and give the illusion of movement. According to our guide, Nick, the wings are covered in 1,056,000 tiles!!!

From the opera house we toured through the Central Business District (CBD) of Sydney and then headed out to Bondi Beach on the east shore (?) of Sydney.  Waves looked a little rough but our tour guide, Melissa said the waves were actually pretty flat today.  Greater Sydney has over 100 beaches, but Bondi Beach is located in a pretty tony (i.e. expensive) part of town.  Mel said that most of the beaches in Australia (or at least Sydney) are topless (for men & women) and they actually have some nude beaches as well.

Bondi Beach

Mel pointed out all kinds of interesting architecture in the various sections of Sydney as we made our way pack to the pier to begin our adventure on Majestic Princess (more on that in my next post. Suffice it to say we didn't get to the pier until 12:30 p.m. or so and by then the joint was really jumping!

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