Broadening our knowledge even further

After all we learned yesterday on our tour we wanted to expand that knowledge further today. Of course this wasn't our original plan as always with our days. We had planned to get a bus over the Harbour Bridge and walk a 10km coastal walk to Manly and then get a ferry back to the harbour from Manly. This was the plan but unfortunately you have to travel on these vehicles with an Opal card which you top money up on. Our bus and ferry cost $10.50 but you have to put money on in $10 notes so we'd have to top up $20 each and then to make it worse you can't get any money left over back. It's a ridiculous scheme and it made us change our plan to not be out of pocket by the system. After spending a good hour and half hunting tourist information desks and weighing up our options we decided to head to The Rocks Discovery museum. The Rocks was an area near the harbour which use to be aboriginal but became an area of high poverty and primarily occupied by Irish settlers. We stopped for a quick coffee at the top of the art museum which gives you good views of the opera house but as you can see from my photograph the beautiful building was blocked by a huge cruise ship! The Rocks museum afterwards had 4 small rooms over 2 floors but even still we spent 3 hours up until closing time in there. It was full of interesting information and artifacts and we were shocked to see many couples come in and walk through the whole exhibition within 2 minutes and then leave. You wonder why they even bother to come and look at it. The museum gave us such an insight into the early settlement days and how the convicts who were sent there and built the city lived. The city was at one point funded by alcohol when money had no value which resulted in pubs popping up everywhere in Sydney's early days. It also meant things like the hospital were built by convicts in exchange for licenses to import a certain volume of gin or rum. After being kicked out of the museum we headed back to the hostel to ensure we were there for the free food being put on. We did stop do I could have a cheeky Krispy Kreme on the way back though. The food tonight was spicy tomato chicken and rice. It was rather nice and made even more enjoyable by the fact it is free. We will miss these free meals here when we leave.Read more