Wednesday March 11, 2026
Hi Folks! We had another day in Sydney and while we had a great day, we did have a major glitch. We had booked a tour of the Opera House and Bondi Beach. We had an amazing tour all thru the inside of the Opera House but never got to Bondi Beach. The tour operator left us at the Opera House!
It was part funny but also part very frustrating. We’ve been on probably thousands of tours and have never been left behind. After the Opera tour, we both went to the restroom and when we came back, the tour guide and all of our group (about 12) were gone! Luckily we were only a 10 minute walk back to our ship. But I’m bummed that Kathy didn’t get to see Bondi Beach (which I’ve been to before). Oh well, we’ll have to come back!
But we did learn a lot about the Opera House. They estimated it would take 3 years to build and cost $7 million. But it actually took 16 years and cost $100 million. Ouch! But it was fully paid for when it opened.
There are actually two venues inside. One has 2,700 seats and is used mostly for concerts and movies. The other has 1,500 seats and is used mostly for Opera and Ballet. It took 10,000 laborers to build and the roof (“sails”) has 1,056,006 tiles on it. It was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth on Oct 20, 1973.
After our interrupted tour, we got back onboard and had lunch and then went walking all over downtown Sydney. We luckily docked right in the heart of town which made for easy walking everywhere. It truly is a beautiful city! I’ll do another update later tonight. Hope everyone’s having a great day!
The Wandering Italian 