In order to actually get to the Eye (the logo for which we agreed looks eerily like Sauron's Eye), we had to cross through part of the city, then through another shopping center, up about five floors and around a winding corridor. At last, we lined up to purchase tickets and yet again stood waiting.
On the way to the tower itself, we passed the Queen Victoria Building and several other landmarks. Sydney has a lot of really great architecture to admire!
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| The tower from afar! We have nearly completed our quest to reach its pinnacle! |
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| Why yes, that is a fake building. They were rennovating, or something. I think. |
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| Remember what I said in the last post about buskers? They're everywhere. |
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| These guys were pretty creative. They used a bucket as their kick-drum. |
There was a lot of waiting going on on Saturday for some reason. Traffic. Queues everywhere. Traffic signals.
Truthfully, a lot of waiting.
When we got to the Sydney Tower Eye, the waiting just continued. The people behind us were considerably more impatient than we (and very vocal about the fact that they had pre-paid tickets, so why did they have to wait with the rest of us peons) and actually caused the staff to open a second line.
At the front of the line, I immediately realized that the cashier was American. I tried to figure out where she was from by listening, but couldn't quite get it. Eventually, when she saw my driver's license to check my signature against the receipt, she admitted to being from Arizona--pratically neighbors!
Y'know.
If you don't count New Mexico being in the middle there. She was really friendly and quite sweet, however, and wished us a happy trip up the tower. She handed us two pairs of 3D glasses for the "4D Cinema Experience" and we moved on to get in yet another line to wait for the movie to start.
Now, I know that 3D movies are all the rage and I know that Australians love interactive experiences, but this may have been a bit much. 4D means, in Wes' words, Wet-D. The theater had fans to blow on our faces during the windy scenes, misty spray to sprinkle from the ceiling on our faces during the wet scenes, vibrating floorboards to rumble during the surfing scene, lights flashing during the flame-throwing scene and bubbles drifting from the ceiling during the underwater scenes. I admit, I giggled through much of the showing.
It was neat and cleverly entertaining, but I think too much more than the allotted four minutes and thirty seconds of that and I would have wanted to walk out.
After the movie, we got into yet another line to go up the tower. The elevator up is really quite easy and thankfully not as fast as I was expecting. I anticipated that my guts would drop into my knees, but that happily didn't happen.
At the top of the tower, our experience only improved. Wes got to chuckle and chortle as I ooh'd and aah'd in every direction and took a lot of photos. The view from the top really is quite impressive. Maybe, if I'm braver, next time we'll do the Skywalk, where you get strapped into a harness and taken outside on the deck above the observation level.
Or maybe we'll just be cowardly and eat at the rotating restaurant just below the observation level, instead. Maybe.
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| Really nice look at the Harbour! There's Fort Denison in the middle and the zoo is on the far side of the water. |
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| Sooo many buildings! |
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| A very long shadow ... and some kind of function down in the park on the right. We had no idea what was going on, but there were a whole lot of tables out. |
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| A ... gallery? Museum? I can't remember what Wes said the building is, but it was something fairly ... well ... important. |
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| As for this ... |
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| "It's just some memorial!" said Wes. |
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| More buildings! |
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| Look how tiny Town Hall looks in comparison! |
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| That arrow points to where the festival was earlier in the day. Under an overpass and behind that building there on the right. |
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| Wes checking out the scenery, with my parasol strapped to his camera bag. |
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| The Sydney Harbour Bridge! ... reeeally far away. |
Eventually, Wes and I did the (even more) touristy thing and tried to self-take photos in front of the beautiful cityscape. It really wasn't working out so well, since DSLRs are hard to use for self-shot photos, but we were in luck!
Another gentleman with a Canon around his neck kindly offered up his services and took a couple of photos for us.
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| Wes ... was happy, I wear. It's just the sun in his eyes. |
After exchanging a bit of chit-chat with the gentleman about cameras, Wes and I got back to the business at hand of snapping photos like out-of-towners and doing all the silly things tourists do. Like use the binoculars. And mail letters from the highest working postbox in the Southern Hemisphere.
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| ... I wonder who's getting a letter from me. Hmmmmm. (Or maybe I'm just faking it.) |
Eventually, we ran out of touristy things to do at the top of the tower, so we packed it in and headed back to the Galeries to have dinner. As he had predicted earlier in the day, Wes and I would indeed be eating at Hotaru one day.
We just didn't expect it to be so soon!
