Aquarium & Opera House

Sunday June 18th – This morning Sue went on a whale watching tour then had to go to the airport as she left a day before Grant and I. We took care of some boring things like laundry before venturing out to the city. We wandered around the city and Darling Harbor for awhile then went to the Australian National Maritime museum for Grant to get his ‘boat fix”. Then we spent a couple of hours at the Sydney Aquarium. The aquarium has a large display of enormous sharks, the biggest of which are the nurse sharks. There is also a fur seal display and a really good coral reef display, giving us a sneak peek at what we hope to see in a few days!
Afterwards we hopped on a ferry back to Circular Quay and wandered over to the world famous Sydney Opera House. We took a guided tour of the Opera house which was pretty impressive and learned a lot about the controversial and expensive icon. Construction began in 1959 after Danish architect Jorn Utzon won an international design competition with his plans for a $7 million dollar building with a 5 year build plan. Surprisingly Utzon won with drawings of the completed design only, and had no plans on how the structure would be built. Much of the technology to build the Opera House had to be invented specifically for it and it is an engineering marvel. After political interference Utzon quit in 1966 and 3 Australian architects finished the interiors. The building was completed in 1973 with a price tag of $102 million! In today’s money this would be $1.5 billion dollars! Oops, a little over budget wouldn’t you say?
We ended our day by eating at the famous “Harry’s Café de Wheels” which is a little hot dog stand by our hotel. There are photos all over the walls of famous Australians eating here and it was pretty tasty I must say.