I woke up around 8:30, and just decided to walk up to the Opera House and just kinda wander all day. I first stumbled on Darling Harbour, a nice open area with lots of shops and restaurants on the harbor. It was raining, but it was really pretty nonetheless. Here's a nice pic, which I couldn't really get since it was rainy and cloudy:
I then walked over to the SydneyTower to see if I could go up to the top - unfortunately, they warned me that it was super cloudy and I wouldn't see much, so I decided to do "OzTrek" which is basically this 25 minute ride within Sydney that shows you all the places in Australia you could go... it's a nice way to plug the rest of the country, ha! The coolest part was that you sit in these moving seats and watch a movie that looks like you're flying through it - pretty cool.
From there, I walked over to St. Mary's Cathedral - what a huge, gorgeous church. It was beautiful inside, except I was slightly disturbed by the Asian tourists who (no offense to them) seemed slightly disrepectful. I'm not an overly religious person, but I was slightly offended by the Asian woman standing in front of this statue, posing like she was going to be on the cover of Time Magazine, all smiling and leaning on Jesus like it was nothing... I guess I can't judge her for it, but the statue pretty does clearly depict Jesus lying in his mother's arms... I dunno. It was just odd to me.
Anyway, from there, I walked through the Botanic Gardens, and they too were really pretty.
The road leads directly out to the Sydney Opera House, as well - what a site. It truly is something to marvel at - even if the front part is being worked on to prepare for Australian Idol finals on Sunday, ha!
Once I'd taken about a thousand photos of the Opera House, I jumped on the Manly Ferry (haha, makes me laugh every time) to go to Manly Beach. I took about a hundred more photos on my way, and then went to the beach and watched all these surfers. Looking out over the ocean is unreal - it sounds so stupid, but you never feel as small as you do when you're staring at a giant body of water, and all you see is horizon - it's crazy!
I got back on the Ferry, and then went back to the Opera House for a ballet - it was amazing. I don't know much about ballet, but I've seen Centerstage just like the rest of us - the dancers make it looks so easy! And I never noticed this before, but in ballet, a dancer is never NOT moving - even if it's something subtle, like a head movement, but they are constantly in this fluid motion. It's really amazing how much control they have over their bodies - I can barely stand on my own two feet without crashing into something... The tickets I had were in the very last row of the top level, haha, but they moved us all forward b/c the seats in front of us were all empty, so I sat in better seats, woohoo!
After the ballet was over, I took a gizzilion more photos of the opera house in the dark... unfortunately, most of them came out blurry b/c I didn't have my tripod :(. Oh well... maybe we can claim that they are "art" - ha. After one last look at the Opera House, I jumped on the bus and headed back to the hostel. What a day! 
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