The City Tour (Day 52)

Saturday is general the days I don’t have anything pre-planned and so it becomes the day that I try to the task I don’t have time for during the rest of the week. Do some groceries, do some cooking, doing the laundry. But Saturday is also the day I try to cross things from my Sydney bucket list. So my plan was to go to Bondi and do the Bondi to Coogee walk. It is a famous walk and almost every tourist is doing it. But things changed during the day. One of the housemates suggested doing a free walking tour. The tour is given by locals and tell you something about the history of the city and the buildings. So I decided to go, not that for the reason to see more of the centrum of Sydney, that I have seen multiple time at the moment. I went to hear about the history of this city. Because I have been here for 52 days and I still don’t know a lot about the history of the city.

During the tour, I learned some interesting facts, like:

The mint, the first hospital in Sydney was funded by selling the right to sell Alcohol in the colony.
The architect of the opera house was chosen by a design competition, which got 233 entries from 32 countries. The government chose to go for a Danish entree, Jørn Utzon. After delays and going over budget couple of time, the new government decided in 1965 to no longer pay Jørn. So he resigned and move back to Denmark. When the opera house was officially opened in 1973, Jørn got never invited for the ceremony and never went back to Australia to see the opera house finished during his life. The final cost of the opera house was 102 million Australian dollar. What was 95 million more than they expected that it would cost.
The City decided to remove car lanes from the centrum of Sydney:

The part of the matrix was filmed in Sydney.
The fountain in Hyde park was made to show the relation between France and Australia with Greek mythology.
The Westfield tower is called “the golden bucket”, because it looks like a golden bucket. The Westfield tower has a bar that rotates, so if you drink slowly you have 360 degree view of Sydney.
Queen Victoria Building, has a statue of Queen Victoria that was made in 1907 and was located before Ireland parlement, but was in the mid-1980 moved to Australia, before this building. The Queen victoria building is part of a big shopping mall, that is connect by different basement that they didn’t use anymore. When in the basement section of the shopping mall you can see on the floor tiles when you are leaving the Queen Victoria Building and going into another basement.

St Mary’s Cathedral was constructed in 1821, but was ruined by fire in 1965. Reconstruction was took 101 years, finishing in 2000 just in time for the Olympic Games.

After the tour, I quickly walked to the Royal botanic garden to catch some Pokemon. There was a community day event going on, where you could catch a special Pokemon for a limited time. When I arrived in the park I only had 15 min left to catch this Pokemon and luckily I catch one.