38 degrees, sunny
After breakfast we wandered round to the Tram stop to catch a tram to Darling Harbour, which turned out to be mostly restaurants and shops. Having walked right round, we watched the swing bridge open up
and walked up the harbour side towards Sydney Harbour Bridge, via Millers Point. By this time it was about 1.00 pm and seriously hot with no shade to be had whilst walking round the headland. We eventually found some trees in a small park to flop under to recover.
Steps we decided not to go up but walked round the headland instead!
After much to-ing and fro-ing we finally reached the bridge road level to walk across, but it was much too hot to walk all the way across and back, so decided to climb one of the stone pylons to view the Harbour. (We were later told that the four pylons are not actually connected to the bridge, but were added later as people didn’t feel confident in crossing just a steel bridge – as soon as they were built usage of the bridge increased dramatically!)
The lovely (but not cool) breeze at the top made the 200 odd steps almost worthwhile! Back down again and we walked a little way across the bridge and back again, just because we had to.
After a quick look round the Rocks area (again shops and restaurants) and a dash back to the hotel for a freshen up (running out of clothes quite quickly here!), we went back into the centre for an Open Air Cinema show at Mrs Macquarie’s Point. We hoped to find something light to eat on the way to the venue, but there was nothing suitable so ended up having just an ice cream sandwich for tea once we reached the cinema.
The film was ‘Destroye’r starring Nicole Kidman and (unknown to us) it was the premiere of the film and she was there to introduce it. When we arrived there was a long queue of people and we couldn’t work out what it was all about until a security guard told us. As we weren’t the least be interested in seeing a ‘celebrity’ we thought we’d get ahead of the game and get a good seat in the front of the screen. But when we went in all the seats had reserved stickers on them so we ended up at the back on the end of a row, which turned out to be fine once the screen was raised. Our position was also excellent to see the lit up Opera House with the Bridge in the background, which was a good thing as the film was dire! The flying foxes also lightened the boring bits as they flew around and screeched at inappropriate moments. Very polite applause at the end of the film so we imagine we weren’t the only ones under-whelmed.
Walked back to the hotel at just before midnight and the temperature was still 30 degrees or so.
In all we walked over 12 miles and climbed 71 flights of stairs today – in 38 degrees. Must want our heads looking at again!