Australia - Sydney

We spent 6 days in Sydney & loved every minute.

We began by admiring the breathtaking views from 250 metres up at the top of the Sydney Tower.

We spent a day walking in the city along Elizabeth Street, through the Botanic Gardens, past the Opera House & then up onto the Harbour Bridge.

We made a trip out across the harbour on the ferry to Manly where we took a long walk along the shoreline.

We travelled by train up into the Blue Mountains where we took a long walk from the picturesque village of Leura along a cliff path (when we eventually found it!) to the spectacular Three Sisters rock formation and then on to end the day in Katoomba.

We visited an Orthodox synagogue - the Great Synagogue of Sydney where we took a guided tour & Howard attended a Mincha service - and a Reform Synagogue - Temple Emanuel in Woollahara, in the Easterns Suburbs of Sydney, the equivalent of East Renfrewshire in terms of the Jewish community but with the advantage of having Bondi Beach on the doorstep! The liturgy follows U.S. Reform to a large extent but within the congregation there is a smaller minyan that follows U.S. Conservative/Masorti liturgy which is the service that we chose to attend - & enjoy!

We trekked along the Eastern Beaches Coast Walk taking in Bondi Beach, Coogee, Clovelly, Gordons Bay & Tamarama on the way.

We even managed to get tickets to a Rachmaninov concert conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazi at the Opera house!

We ate well in fantastic restaurants.

We saw some of the rather different wildlife.

We heard our first "fair dinkum".

And then we picked up the Wicked camper van which was to be our home for the next 5 weeks and headed south....................................