cold light of the day it didn’t look the most attractive of places and some of the people looked very rough indeed! We were also very surprised and alarmed at the cost of things! Australia was going to be expensive, that we were realising very quickly!!!

In the afternoon, we thought we’d just head down to the harbour and check out the Opera House and have a wander, we didn’t even take the big camera! At least where our accommodation was wasn’t too far from the harbour, it only took us around 15 minutes to walk there. We walked around the harbour and could just about see the bridge in the distance. There were lots of restaurants and huge boats hugging the harbour walls, we checked out a few of the menus and realised that we would most definitely be cooking for ourselves! We carried on round the harbour, turned a corner and there it was in all its splendour!! Sydney harbour and Opera

House. It looked stunning in the sunshine with its crystal clear waters glistening but it isn’t as big as you expect it to be. In fact the whole harbour area is a lot smaller than you imagine, I don’t really think you get a true perspective of its size from the TV pictures until you have seen of it. Having said that Sydney is blessed with having a beautiful waterside setting. The botanic gardens are also set around the harbour so we wandered through these and were pretty amazed at all of the difference species of plants and how big the upside down fruit bats were that were hanging precariously from the overhead trees. It had a very relaxed feel to it this part of the city and in my mind is the nicest area. The gardens are free and have a multitude of picnic tables full of people and families enjoying the beautiful setting and generally having fun.

The Opera House is just around to the left of