So, it is 4:40 am on Sunday morning and I'm FINALLY back home. I arrived on a foggy Detroit winter morning to 40 degree Farenheit weather after waking at 6 a.m. on Saturday Jan. 5th in Sydney (which was 1 pm Thursday, here in Ann Arbor) and my day(s) since went as follows: I have been on a plane with an unscheduled stop in Brisbane, Australia (10 am - 11:40 a.m). We deplane in Brisbane as they have to "replace the engine" and handle some "mechani...

So... last night, thanks to Geno who encouraged me to do things I might otherwise not do, I climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Surprisingly it was not a hard climb and as I admitted I was an acrophobic, I was pulled to the very front of the line. It is really a shame they do not allow you to take cameras up with you, as the views are totally amazing. It was so worth the money. I did an evening climb for the lights of the city and the Opera House. I'm having trou...

So today our New Year's Day wine tour was cancelled, but not before we got up (only 5 hours of sleep) and spent 45 mintues waiting for a bus that never showed. So we decided to walk around, took a bus down to Circular Quay (pronounced "key") and hop a ferry back to Darling Harbour. We thought it would be a good day to visit Otzi, the oldest mummy found, as the Maritime Museum had a display on artifacts found. They did a nice job of it, replicating the...

So we are up early and hop a bus down to the Opera House for our backstage tour with Adam, a trombone player. He is actually very knowledgable and gave us many interesting facts and stories about the place. The tour was only 8 people, and we had a marvelous breakfast at the end. We learned that plans are in the works with the original architect to fix existing problems with staging and moving things as well as expansion. Considering that the designer, name escape...