OCTOBER 31: YESTERDAY TOURING THE CITY - TODAY TOURING THE OPERA HOUSE
We are now on our third and last day here in Australia's biggest city. And we have both survived it - the city and us :-) We are all three of us in top form!
Yesterday we toured the city by ferry, by foot and by bus. We saw and heard things we saw last time in 2011. And we saw and learned new things, of course. You always do that in this city. Our tour around city with the hop-on-hop-off bus ( they call it BIG BUS here ) was very hot and open on the top deck - we had forgotten our head gear :-( But in lovely Darling Harbour we found good shadow, good food and a chilly local beer in a nice Thai restaurant. We enjoyed walking in the centre with all its old colonial buildings like the old Town Hall, the Victoria Building with all its shops, the Customs House at the harbour and much more. Not least a very lively atmosphere everywhere. When we needed something cold and stimulating we enjoyed it in a very nice wine bar. We had a great talk with the waiter - a very nice young man, Sebastian, from Quito in Ecuador. He has just finished his masters degree in hotel management here a month ago and has still two years' permission to stay in Australia, so he worked here. He was very interested in Denmark and Europe.
As the weather all of a sudden got very cloudy, very windy and significantly colder, we took our ferry back to our hotel towards the end of the afternoon. When I at our local mini-harbour wanted to take a photo of the stormy weather and the water, a big wave of noisy water jumped off the sea and hit me from top to bottom :-( In a split second I got very wet. But I took the photo. Are you a viking - or aren't you!
Back home at our hotel we enjoyed a good glass on our balcony with a great view on the sea. While doing that we were interrupted by several big chattering parrots. The apparently live here, and perhaps they were not happy to see us around.
Today we have been touring the world famous SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE. We saw it from outside last time. This alone is breathtaking. And it is also very impressive inside. As all Danes know it was the Danish architect Jørn Utzon from Aalborg, who is "the father" of the Opera House. There were 233 different proposals in the competition. And in the first round of selection Utzon's proposal was dropped. But when the famous Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen - a member of the jury - turned up after a flight delay he ( after having studied all 233 proposals himself ) insisted that Utzon's proposal should be the winner. If not, he would leave the jury. Nobody dared to contradict him. And Sydney got its now world famous Opera House. It is today also on UNESCO's World Heritage list.
The site where the Opera House is build was for thousands of years an important meeting place for the native Australians, the Aboriginals. Later it was the garage for the trams of Sydney. And now it is again a meeting place for people! The construction started in 1959 and finished in 1973, when Queen Elizabeth made the official opening. The costs were originally foreseen to be 7 million Australian dollars. And at the end the total costs were 103 million dollars. Almost all of it was financed by gambling through a special Opera lotto!
The Opera House has always been a very busy cultural centre. It has about 1.600 events per year - from opera, drama, ballet, concerts, karaoke to conferences - and much more. It has a permanent staff of 600 people + a lot of tasks, which are contracted out to others. Financially it earns 95 % of its costs through all its activities.
It is all most impressive!
Yesterday we toured the city by ferry, by foot and by bus. We saw and heard things we saw last time in 2011. And we saw and learned new things, of course. You always do that in this city. Our tour around city with the hop-on-hop-off bus ( they call it BIG BUS here ) was very hot and open on the top deck - we had forgotten our head gear :-( But in lovely Darling Harbour we found good shadow, good food and a chilly local beer in a nice Thai restaurant. We enjoyed walking in the centre with all its old colonial buildings like the old Town Hall, the Victoria Building with all its shops, the Customs House at the harbour and much more. Not least a very lively atmosphere everywhere. When we needed something cold and stimulating we enjoyed it in a very nice wine bar. We had a great talk with the waiter - a very nice young man, Sebastian, from Quito in Ecuador. He has just finished his masters degree in hotel management here a month ago and has still two years' permission to stay in Australia, so he worked here. He was very interested in Denmark and Europe.
As the weather all of a sudden got very cloudy, very windy and significantly colder, we took our ferry back to our hotel towards the end of the afternoon. When I at our local mini-harbour wanted to take a photo of the stormy weather and the water, a big wave of noisy water jumped off the sea and hit me from top to bottom :-( In a split second I got very wet. But I took the photo. Are you a viking - or aren't you!
Back home at our hotel we enjoyed a good glass on our balcony with a great view on the sea. While doing that we were interrupted by several big chattering parrots. The apparently live here, and perhaps they were not happy to see us around.
Today we have been touring the world famous SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE. We saw it from outside last time. This alone is breathtaking. And it is also very impressive inside. As all Danes know it was the Danish architect Jørn Utzon from Aalborg, who is "the father" of the Opera House. There were 233 different proposals in the competition. And in the first round of selection Utzon's proposal was dropped. But when the famous Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen - a member of the jury - turned up after a flight delay he ( after having studied all 233 proposals himself ) insisted that Utzon's proposal should be the winner. If not, he would leave the jury. Nobody dared to contradict him. And Sydney got its now world famous Opera House. It is today also on UNESCO's World Heritage list.
The site where the Opera House is build was for thousands of years an important meeting place for the native Australians, the Aboriginals. Later it was the garage for the trams of Sydney. And now it is again a meeting place for people! The construction started in 1959 and finished in 1973, when Queen Elizabeth made the official opening. The costs were originally foreseen to be 7 million Australian dollars. And at the end the total costs were 103 million dollars. Almost all of it was financed by gambling through a special Opera lotto!
The Opera House has always been a very busy cultural centre. It has about 1.600 events per year - from opera, drama, ballet, concerts, karaoke to conferences - and much more. It has a permanent staff of 600 people + a lot of tasks, which are contracted out to others. Financially it earns 95 % of its costs through all its activities.
It is all most impressive!
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