Sydney pre-Christmas Part 4

The principal reason for our Sydney visit was to be at the wedding of our niece Justine. The ceremony was at St Brigid's the old Catholic Church at the Rocks, and afterwards at the Pavilion near the Art Gallery.
 The bride was of course very beautiful.

 It wasn't a huge event but the guests were multi-cultural: a contingent came from Colombia, and European countries were also represented, as well at least three Australian States.

The couple demonstrated their togetherness with a dance routine they had well prepared for show. On that performance they won't have to rely on their PhDs for a job.

We pray that their well being together may continue as brilliantly as it has begun.

This concludes our 2012 blogging. We plan a relaunch next year with a new name, or at least a new year title.

Sydney Pre-Christmas part 3

On Saturday we took a Sydney ferry up the river to Parramatta (1 hour 'express up and 1.5 hours all stops on the way back). Our $2.50 day excursion ticket covered that, and the train ride from Circular Quay. If there is a better public transport deal than that anywhere in the world we'd like to hear about it. The ferry is a catamaran:

Parramatta seems to close at lunchtime on Saturday but we eventually got a tasty hamburger and cider and strolled through the city to Old Government House Park (Governor Phillip's residence for a little while).

We walked back to the ferry along the river path.

In the evening we ate at Diethnes Greek Restaurant. This was another experience so good that we have again put a separate review on TripAdvisor.

Part 4 (the final episode) will come later.

Sydney pre Christmas part 2

We spent our 3 nights at Sheraton on the Park and were very pleased with the accommodation. I hadn't been there since a partners' conference many years ago when it was the newest luxury hotel in town. It has lost none of its sparkle. In fact it was so good that we decided to review it in TripAdvisor- if interest extends this far it should be posted in the next few days.

We ate at Billy Kwong on Friday night, fulfilling a long held ambition after viewing many Kylie Kwong episodes on TV. The ingredients were Australian, unusual (such as Stir-Fried Organic Old Man Salt Bush Leaves with Young Ginger) and delicious. We had to take a limited time  booking from six o'clock- it's not a place to linger. Pleasing to see the "fair trade" and "make poverty history" stickers on the windows as well as a small charity donation added to the bill.

Sydney pre-Christmas part 1

We spent 3 nights in Sydney at the weekend.
Day one we used to see the Alexander Exhibition at the Australian Museum. This is a collection from the State Hermitage at St Petersburg. We were somewhat underwhelmed, possibly our fault for being under prepared. Many of the exhibits were collations of small things where the curator had not effectively related the object to the title by numbering. Other exhibits were only marginally connected to Alexander from later centuries up to modern times.