Sydney Part II

We arrived in Sydney quite late on Wednesday evening, so left our First Big Adventure until Thursday, when we headed over to the QVB (as the cool kids call the Queen Victoria Buildings). It's super luxe, with beautiful stained glass and ornamentation:


Even the loos are flash - outside:

And in:
The next day we went out to Parramatta, about 25 minutes away by train, to meet up with our friend Bob, who took us to the lovely Old Government House for lunch.

The House itself is an historic building which hosts school tours teaching about Sydney's Colonial past, complete with costumed characters.


As you can see, it's hardly huge and imposing, but it was apparently considered a sign of the excess of the unpopular Governor Macquarie who built it, at least by those who wanted him out of power (can you tell who took the guided historical tour?).

Following our lovely lunch, we headed back to Sydney on the lovely Parramatta River, easily the most tourist-photo friendly journey we made (and creepy, thanks to the mangroves):

Sydney illuminated by sunset:

Landmark sandwich - Harbour Bridge framing the Opera House:

For Nan's last night, we decided to have dinner down at Darling Harbour, looking out at the beautiful lights and marvelling at our wait staff, who took a break after our dessert arrived to ingest helium from some leftover party balloons and talk like chipmunks. Colonials, eh?