Hopping!

We headed out for a pub meal last night and managed to stay awake until 9 o’clock and managed to sleep pretty well through to 8:30. It was cooler today at around 20C, but warm enough for breakfast out on the patio. Feeding completed we packed our bag and headed down to Kings Cross station to catch the Hop-on-Hop-Off city tour. We usually go for these buses, if they run, in all the major cities we visit as we find they give us a good view of the city and ideas for places to go back to. I will pad out this with pictures as after a day of touring and lingering jet lag I am in danger of falling asleep at the keys! Our first stop was the Opera House / Bridge / Botanical Gardens

The Botanical Gardens had an exhibition of biting beasties and a flower garden to advertise it!

Back on the bus we passed a Naval dockyard which still had some of the older barracks.

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Then on to a place with more “o”‘s in one word than I have ever seen before.

We passed the worlds largest vertical gardens at 1 Central Park

The next point we got off was at “The Rocks”, an old fashioned type of area with a weekend market.

The Rocks was also a good place to get lunch. We continued on the bus back into the city core and switched to the Bondi Beach bus. This bus, believe it or not, took us out to Bondi Beach. We were both a little underwhelmed when we go there, perhaps we have seen too many beaches!!

On our return to the city the skies were becoming darker with the promise of a storm. Luckily we had decided on an inside seat rather than the open upper deck. By the time we had to change buses the rain had started. Luckily there was a small bus shelter as the storm had arrived; rain thunder and lightning!

By the time the next bus arrived the storm had abated somewhat, and by the time we got off the bus for the final walk to the hotel it had stopped. That’s it for day one. Too tired to proof read so enjoy the errors.