What can I say about this vibrant, modern, active city?  What a great place to wind up the Australia portion of our trip!

The iconic views of Sydney featuring the bridge and the opera house. Really, the core is very walkable as Mark and proved on our third day here by walking about 10 miles of it.

From a height above the city we saw where the Sydney Harbor meet the Tasman Sea.

The waves of Bondi Beach.

The Harbor Bridge.

Sydney Opera House.

Best tour of the day was a guided tour inside the opera house.  The sails are an absolute work of genius.  The guy who designed it had his plan adopted without any structural engineer input so when it came time to figure out how to build it a lot of thinking had to go on.  Finally the epiphany came and the guy worked it out using a sphere to cut the sails into sections.  The buttresses were then formed out of concrete and slipped together like Legos.

It took 17 years to build and of course there were cost over runs.  The designer got fired and never saw his finished building.

The tiles were all specially made and are actually beige-ish.  They made 250,000 extra tiles but have only used 5 so far!  Amazing.

It was dark when we finished the tour and we got to see a light laser show projected on the sails.  I posted some of this on Instagram.  But as we were leaving the bridge and city buildings lit up!  What a fantastic end to a fantastic day!