Today, our last day in Sydney, we just chilled out. Breakfast outside in a small cafe in Hyde Park, a wander through the Hyde Park Barracks Museum and St. Mary’s Cathedral, and a bit of shopping.  Now, we’re getting ready to head to the opera house for a tour, a sampling menu in the Opera Bar overlooking Sydney Harbour, and then the main event — La Boheme in the main hall at the iconic Sydney Opera House.

A couple of highlights from today:

First, I tried vegemite at breakfast. It’s OK. Consistency of Nutella. Color of, well, shit. Salty and really not a lot of taste, in my opinion. It won’t be a regular thing on my plate.

Hyde Park Barracks Museum is great. It’s where every convict sent from Great Britain had to land in order to be given a job and a living arrangement, and be tried and sentenced if they commit a crime while in Australia. It’s also where women who traveled here – to meet husbands or parents sent here, or just to seek a new life — had to stay for a while until a proper place could be found for them (cause, you know, they couldn’t be trusted to handle themselves, apparently). In later years, it became an asylum and then a home for old women and then a public office complex. It’s been lovingly restored and tells the stories of the tens of thousands of people who came to Sydney in the 1800s, either by choice or not. The stories of those who passed through here are told so well and, as you’re given a chance to lie in their beds and hammocks and try on their clothes (I mean, I get that they’re not their REAL clothes, but still…), you can feel their stories and spirits throughout the barracks. Like phantoms.

St. Mary’s Cathedral is beautiful. Serene. Gorgeous grounds.

Opera was amazing. I DID NOT fall asleep this time.  Here we are just before it started.