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Thursday was a nice day again (yay!) so we jumped at the chance to catch a ferry over the water to Manley, about half an hour away. We somehow managed to get first dibs on the seats on the boat, so ran to the very back deck at the front.... unwise it may have seemed but when the boat pulled out of Circular Quay we were rewarded with gorgeous views of the city, the Opera House, the Bridge and the Botanical Gardens, all in one. Half an hour later, we pulled into Manly and decided to go for a walk along the beach. Liam then somehow managed to persuade a restaurant to change its specials board all for him - we went looking for fish and chips and Liam fancied prawns, which he told the waiter who was trying to reel us in. In no time at all the waiter was saying, 'No problem, I'll inform the kitchen, take a seat,' and a meal was invented, for a special price, all for him :)
In the afternoon was our Opera House tour. We were both pretty excited - it's possible to see the structure from every possible angle you can (and we have, from the air, from the sea, from the land) and still not have time to run around inside. We met up with our tourguide, a bored looking chap called James, who proceeded to dash any excitement we had by that point. He was, categorically the most dull dull dull man either of us have ever met. We reckon he was dumped moments before he was told to take a tour - and because of that any glamour that the Opera House had was lost. We did go into 3 of the 4 main theatres (one of them was being renovated) but by far the most spectacular was the fourth one - the Musician's hall. Built entirely to accomodate a giant orchestra, the place was huge and very pretty. We went backstage, where the only useful comment James could make was 'lots of stairs, yeah,' then watched a video clip or two of the construction of the building. We learnt that the Opera House had exceeded it's budget by about $95 million, and the Danish architect who was responsible for the initial plans never actually saw the finished project before he died. Quite sad really.
After the tour we had a couple of hours to kill before another show so we wanted around Circular Quay admiring the lights on display. All around Sydney there were various demonstrations of energy-efficient light - for example one set of lights were powered by onlookers pedalling crazy fast on bikes. The coolest and most obvious part was the illuminated sails of the Opera House, it would rotate every few minutes and was very clever. Then it was time to see our pre-booked play called 'When The Rain Stopped.' We weren't really sure what to expect as the synopsis wasn't very explicit, but it ended up being really absorbing - a clever story spanning 4 generations of one family. It wasn't especially about rain, but the same jokes about the weather would be repeated at times by different members of the family. We were both hooked and really enjoyed it, and considering we booked tickets two days ago and were sat right at the back it was a great view.
Today (Friday), Claire's cough really wasn't looking much happier, so we spent the day hibernating and trying to sleep it off, and looking for a decent chemist. We visited two pharmacies - one of which suggested she visit a doctor, and upon enquiring further discovered it would cost about 25 pounds for an appointment, never mind the medicine itself. NO THANKYOU! The next chemist, after feeling very sorry for us, gave us the stronger cough medicine he could find, and wished us well. Time will tell if it works or not.
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