Sunday morning. It started early for me - because Ryan was snoring all night! I woke up around 3am and just could not go back to sleep. I eventually did, but then Shannon got up to shower at 8, so I was up then. Looked out the window...and it was a gray, gloomy day.
BUT - not raining yet! It was supposed to rain most of today, so I decided to take advantage of the semi-decent weather and go for a run through the Royal Botanical Gardens, right behind the Intercontinental hotel.
I've officially seen the Opera House from every single side now...
The area was beautiful - trees and rocks, the ocean and plants... Too bad there wasn't a little blue sky and sunshine to go along with it!
I found a nice set of stairs and decided to take a break from the jogging to do some stairs work. I only made it up and down three times before calling it a wrap. Stairs are hard!
So I jogged back to the hotel and went straight to the buffet breakfast to meet Shannon -- sweaty and all. I didn't care.
I might have gotten a little carried away with food. It might not look like much, but those pare big plates...and that's a LOT of smoked salmon. I mixed it all together for my own version of an omelet, and ended up leaving a pretty good pile on the plate. Oh and I had my first crumpet! Not really impressed, but I had to try one. Kind of like a pancake a little?
Ryan eventually met us down at breakfast, too. He went to the gym for a morning workout while I ran. After we were all done eating...we went back to bed! Okay - not really - but we did go back to the room and just veg out for awhile. We had some more research and booking to do for the rest of the trip, and it was really raining hard out by that point, so there wasn't anything else to do!
A little after noon, we decided we should make our move and go out for the day. My phone hasn't been working when I put the US sim card in. So I wasn't getting any text messages...which was annoying. We decided a little trip to the Apple store was in order to get it all straightened out.
Walking in Sydney under umbrellas!
We were just a couple of blocks away when we spotted a LuluLemon store. None of us can walk by one of those without at least popping in to take a look.
I was wearing my Lulu WunderUnder pants! I've worn them two days in a row now, and even slept in them last night!
Ryan and Shannon each tried pants on, and Shannon bought the ones below:
After a stop at an Ugg store, we found the Apple store and explained my iPhone sim card issue. It took THREE of them to figure out what was going on, but somehow, it all of a sudden started working! I got a handful of messages in...so that was a relief!
This old shopping building called The Strand was just across the street from Apple, so we walked through that next. Ryan got a coffee, and we kept on walking out the other side and down the street lined with shops.
We stopped at Myers around 2:30 for Shannon to try and find some more appropriate winter/rain boots (she didn't find any she liked) and then kept walking to the movie theater. We've been talking about seeing this movie if it rained this weekend, and today was the day.
There were some protesters blocking the street yelling, "Let the refugees stay!" I don't know what exactly they were hoping to accomplish by doing that, but all they did was annoy a lot of people trying to get on with their day.
The movie theater was NUTS. Completely packed, and we quickly found out it was Sydney Film Festival week. We bought our tickets to see Finding Dori at 3:30, and the went to find some food nearby.
(Oh, tickets were $25 for the movie! That's a lot!)
Pretty sure we were in China Town or something like that, because every restaurant was either Chinese, Japanese, or Vietnamese. We found a little cafe that had reasonably priced sandwiches and ordered some to go. Shannon and Ryan had already eaten theres before my smoked salmon wrap had even come out! So I was the only one who actually took mine to go. Just threw it in my bag to sneak it in to the movie theater.
Ryan and I went in to find our seats while Shannon went to the bathroom - it was a huge theater. We both about fell over laughing so hard when we found the seats. Mine was covered in a trash bag! And when I pulled it back, the chair was filthy. Covered in chocolate and who knows what else. I'm sorry, but I did not pay $25 to sit on a TRASH BAG!
I marched right back down to the ticket counter and cut right to the very front. I just walked in front of everyone and said "Excuse me, my seat is covered in a trash bag and I'm not sitting there," and showed him the picture. Thank goodness he didnt' fight me and gave us three seats just a few rows back.
We got some snacks (Shan got gummy worms, I got some chips) and then went back to the theater as the previews and advertisements were starting.
They were the strangest advertisements I've ever seen. I mean just terrible commercials with really bad acting/singing. No wonder people think the US is so cool. Our commercials are way better than the ones I've seen here so far.
And after a couple of previews, our movie started! Finding Dory! It was a super cute show, and we all enjoyed it. Glad we went!
It was STILL raining by the time we got out of the movie at 5:30. We were only a few blocks away from Darling Harbour - where we were Friday night for the fireworks - so we decided to just walk there and take the ferry back to Circular Quay. We had money leftover on our cards to use and it was closer than walking all the way back the way we came.
There wasn't one person at the ferry when we got there. Apparently the only time people in Sydney come out is for the Vivid Lights... Other than that, most of the places we went were completely dead!
I don't like to sit inside on boats, preferring the fresh air outside. It was cold and rainy, but I stayed outside anyways. Shannon and Ryan lasted about 2 minutes and then went in.
Another view of the Sydney Opera House...slightly edited...on the ferry ride home.
We were all kind of hungry by then, around 6:30...but not really hungry. I saw a sign for pumpkin soup and that just sounded good, so that's where we went. Unfortunately for us, that was right in the main tourist area. So the food was overpriced and underwhelming. The pumpkin soup pretty much sucked, and so did everyone else food. And it was $15! Ugh.
Back to the hotel for sleep after that. We barely made it to 8pm, even with Top Gun showing on the tv.
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