Vacation Pics!

I haven't been able to do as much traveling as I'd like these last few years, but I did get away for a short trip lately to Australia. So today I'm going to post a few snapshots from my trip to Sydney.

Sydney is a very picturesque city with a lot of history...

These firemen are standing in front of the oldest bar in Australia, which is located only a few blocks from the Observatory, which is set at the top of a really big hill. I'm not real fond of big hills, but I heard the view was nice. Here's part of the path leading up to the Observatory. That's it in the background...

Here's the front of the Observatory...

  And here's one of the views from the Observatory...

Some people prefer this view...

Or even this one...

There's just no accounting for tastes, I guess.

We were lucky enough to be in the city for the St Patrick's Day parade...which, as it happened, took place several days after St Patrick's Day, but that's not really important. Here's part of the parade...

Since it was the tail end of their summer, the weather in Sydney was really hot. We went to a couple of local beaches to cool off. This is Bondi Beach, where they have a famous Lifeguard Museum.

This is an exhibit in the museum. It's a little hard to tell, but it has to do with the evolution of swimwear:

Here's another view:

The other beach we visited was the intriguingly named Manly Beach. Here's the Manly Lifeguard.

Here's part of the Manly Police Force...

 Here's the Flamenco guitarist who serenaded us while we ate lunch...

And here are a few other...well, Manly men, I guess you'd call them...

On our last night in town we took a dinner cruise on a sailing vessel called the Southern Swan. That's the Opera House in the background, in case you missed it.

This is a view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge taken from the Southern Swan...

This is part of the Southern Swan's crew. Note the pirate earring. Nice touch, huh?

Here's the captain of the Southern Swan pondering the angst, loneliness and romanticism of life on the high seas...

In his off-hours, the Captain also fronts for a rockin' Celtic band (crew-boy has several of their songs on his iPod, btw). Unfortunately, this failed to impress the Swedish Exchange Students with whom the Captain was flirting.

They turned him down.  Yes. I eavesdrop. A lot. How else am I supposed to come up with story ideas, hmm?