First day in Sydney

We arrived in Sydney Saturday evening.  There is an adjacent train station.  We got tickets for the trip into town and, for just over $40, we got one-week transportation passes to use trains, buses and ferries in the city and nearby suburbs.  Without a G.P.S. or detailed maps, we walked a long way to our motel.  Live and learn.

This morning we got delayed going to St Mary's (Mapquest labelled a turn wrong to make matters worse).  We decided to look for the second church on our list- St.Patrick's.  It seemed to be roughly in the same direction, but I was not clear on one of the directions.  Fortunately they have five masses from noon on in addition to the morning services.  We got lost and decided to get on a bus and backtrack.  We asked the driver of the firs bus to stop if he were going our way- apparently not.  We took a shot on the next bus, but instead of taking us back the way we came, it turned toward the city.  A few minutes later we were crossing the Harbour Bridge.  I figured we'd look around downtown and try to find St. Patrick's later.  We saw an Anglican church, a park and a glimpse of another church and decided that was as good a place as any to get off.  Well we were less than a block from St. Patrick's and a bout twenty-five minutes early for the noon (choir) mass.  We waited in the grotto until the prior mass was ending.  A man was recruiting for the Legion of Mary.  I told him we were not local, but from New Zealand.  He said I did not sound as if I were from New Zealand, so I gave him the long version. The church is beautiful.  It was  renovated in 1999.

After church, we went to lunch.  I remembered an ad from the Y.M.C.A. in Invercargill for Doyle's Restaurant at Watson's Bay.  We made our way to the Circular Quay to catch a ferry.  On the way, we saw the Radiance of the Seas in port.  Just over three years ago, we took that ship to Alaska, meeting Brenda, Darrel, Ron and Tiffany on the way.

Doyle's has been there since 1885.  We met a couple on vacation from Long Island while leaving the ferry and joined them for lunch.  We had a wonderful seafood sampler platter between Tara and I and I tried two of their ales.  We had no room for coffee, much less dessert.

We got souvenirs and cards and came home quite tired.  Bed soon, we have to eave at six a.m. to catch a ride for an all-day excursion to Nelson's Bay where we hope to swim with dolphins.