We played last night at the Garrison Church as part of the evening Sunday service. It is a lovely little church. Its name comes from the fact that the Redcoats used to be garrisoned in that area. The vicar of the church thanked us for the lovely concert and gave Kay gifts of books about the history of the little church.

Today was a very busy day. We began our Sydney marathon day with a visit to an opal shop. The shop is Costello’s. It has been in the Costello family for many generations and gives and informative and entertaining show about Australian opals, how they are mined and the various types of rating. We were shown a newly cut black opal. Kathie who LOVES gems kept hoping that this would be given out as a sample, but at $42,000 the owners of the store felt it was not really sample quality.

After warming our credit cards at the store, we returned to the bus for a drive to the Sydney Aquarium. The aquarium was wonderful. They had two sections where you could walk under the tanks. One had seals and sea lions. The other had an assortment of sharks, turtles, bat rays and various fish. One bat ray was larger than a person. It was amazing to have it swim directly over us. Another interesting fish was the Ray Shark which is a mix of ray and shark. Very cool. We also saw the platypus which is even more mixed up than the Ray Shark.

Next we boarded the Majestic Cruise ship for a tour of Sydney’s harbors. The ship took us past the beautiful sights of Sydney like the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. It was very windy and cold but we sat out on the deck anyway to get the full value of the cruise. Fortunately, they did serve hot drinks.

Upon completion of the cruise, we visited Sydney’s most famous site… the Sydney Opera House. The architect of the building was a Danish man named Jorn Utzon who won a design contest. It took 14 years to complete. During the process Jorn Utzon had a disagreement on certain aspects of the building. He left and has never returned to Australia and thus never seen the completed building that is perhaps the most recognized sight in Australia. We finished the evening with a delicious dinner at The Little Snail restaurant.

Editor’s note: Be sure to check out the newest photos here. They are the second set. This was sent on July 31.