Sydney!

This morning we left the apartment to explore the Sydney Opera House! We arrived downtown around 9:15, just in time to sign up for the 9:30 am tour of the opera house :). For an hour, we learned all about the Opera House, including that its design was thought up by a Danish man whose design was thrown out the window during the first round of the competition! There were originally 3 judges for the Opera House design. When they hired the 4th judge, he insisted on seeing all of the designs, including those that had already been thrown out, and so he came upon the design by Danish Architect, Jorn Utzon.

His design was BEAUTIFUL, combining the ideas of Sydney's beaches with a completely new structural element, fusing together the idea of shells from beaches and sailing ships. The shells themselves are constructed of tile that it's thought will last about 200 years a piece. They only have to replace about 3-4 pieces a year, due to theft. Otherwise, the specific glue they constructed for the project holds on to the thousands of tiles placed atop the sails.

During our tour we were also given an INSANE treat - the Sydney Orchestra was in town conducting a rehearsal which we got to watch!!! While we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the theaters, it was amazing to watch them and hear them moving in unison, practicing their music for tonight's performance! It was such a spectacular opportunity to hear them (without having to pay $75 a person!)

After our tour, we sat by the Sydney Harbor and ate the leftovers we'd acquired over the past 2 days for breakfast...while being stared down by some of the world's scariest and most forward pigeons....

*Not shown: pigeons glaring at us 3 feet away...

Our next stop was an internet cafe. We had seen a Groupon deal online for $16 tickets to the IMAX in Sydney...aka the world's largest IMAX! We were quite excited as this was more than half off and we wanted to take advantage of it. So we headed to an internet cafe so we could purchase the Groupon and print out the paperwork we needed to bring with us to IMAX.

When we finally got to the internet cafe we tried purchasing the tickets but after 30 minutes of trying it still wouldn't go through. We contacted Groupon online and it turns out you need an Australian Credit Card and/or a permanent residence here to be able to buy them. No dice. Womp womp. We were pretty upset but also understood. However, we also checked our email while at the internet cafe...and got an email from the fancy resort we booked to go to in Fiji asking us how we were getting to the resort. Ummm what?

Before we booked the resort we had read online that there was a boat to the island (since it's on a tiny island about 2 hours from the mainland) that left the mainland at 1 pm. Our flight arrives at 10:15 am so we figured it wasn't a big deal to take the 1 pm boat and booked the room. Turns out, they no longer offer that boat. The ONLY boat to the island leaves at 10 am. And they wouldn't hold it for 15 minutes. WHAAAAAATTTTTTTTT. HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO GET THERE?!?

After a minor (ok, major) freak out, we emailed back and forth with the resort to try and figure it out. They told us our options were: stay on the mainland for one night and come out the next day OR pay for a chartered flight to the island and leave whatever time we wanted.

I'm sorry, but again, WHATTTTT????

We said we'd stay on the mainland and could we have a refund for the first night.

Absolutely not.

So we looked into chartering a flight. For real.

Turns out the cost of chartering a flight was only slightly more than it would have cost us to get another hotel for the night in Nadi (on the mainland), and pay for taxis and meals, and the added stress.

AHHHHHHHHHH!!

We were seriously freaking out. We took a deep breath, looked at it each, said, "well, this will be a new experience" and handed over our credit card information. SO. We will be arriving in the Yasawa Islands of Fiji IN STYLE in a chartered sea plane! Can't wait to see what THAT is like!!

We had gone to the internet cafe to save money on the IMAX and instead ended up spending a LOT more money than we could have anticipated. Oy.

From the internet cafe we headed to IMAX to purchase our (full price) tickets to watch Star Wars on an 8 story tall screen! Despite our recent setbacks, we were quite looking forward to the movie!

Our next stop was a quick jaunt on Liverpool Street so Jon could take some pictures in his Liverpool jersey :)

before we made our way to the Powerhouse Museum for a DC Lego exhibit!

We had read that Lego Master Nathan Sawaya had a Lego exhibit at the museum which we were quite excited about, and so we made our way to the Powerhouse Museum to check it out!

It was seriously AMAZING. Words can't do it justice soooooooo instead - lots of pictures!

We LOVED the exhibit - it was super awesome (although Jon said that he's got a new life goal...to become a Lego Master...........). Anyhoo - tons of fun and really awesome.

After visiting the Lego portion of the museum we wandered around the rest of the Powerhouse Museum which actually had a ton of cool exhibits. The first floor consisted of projects done by local college students. Some of them were videos which showed different information (some were about the world's population, recycling, etc.) and then others were projects that the students had created to solve world problems (recycling clothes, clothes with labels for blind people, automatic rain covers for clothes lines, etc.). It was cool looking at all the different inventions, many of which I looked at and thought...who even thought about that problem??? :-p.

The bottom of the museum had a hands-on exhibit on the senses. There was an exhibit that showed how washing machines work, another that showed the production of chocolate (which was SUPPOSED to distribute pieces of chocolate and DIDN'T - EVEN THOUGH I COULD SEE THEM!!!! SERIOUSLY disappointing.), an exhibit on how to create fireworks, and another on how smells evoke feelings. Quite interesting, and also the second museum in the last week that we didn't give ourselves enough time at - could have used a lot more than 2 hours! Overall a great museum.

After leaving the museum we wandered down to the harbor to find a place to get drinks. We ended up at a bar a few blocks inland to grab a beer...and there were no seats. After we got the drinks we looked around for 1/2 a second and a guy who was sitting at a 4-seater by himself invited us over to sit. The invitation was quite nice and we decided to take him up on it as he ate his dinner... which turned out to be... an interesting choice... We had... a unique conversation for the next 20 minutes...before gulping down our beers andddddd... semi-running out the door to grab dinner.

We walked a few blocks away and grabbed dinner at a sushi place (SO GOOD) before heading back to Darling Harbor tooooooo... attend a movie at the world's largest IMAX!!!

Cheers mate!

The IMAX was awesome - watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens on an 8-story screen!

After the movie we made our way back to the apartment - time for some sleep - we begin our New Zealand adventures tomorrow!!

Jess' and Jon's highlight of the day: the Lego exhibit!