Sydney Day 3

We have never been to inner suburb of Newtown, which has the Imperial Hotel, a gay venue with drag. Technically the pub is in Erskineville but no matter.  We did not wish to visit the hotel as we guessed there wouldn't be drag performances at 11.00am and the atmosphere may be subdued, but I thought a look around might be good. 

I snapped these of the front of the lovely war memorial. One day we will go inside.

A real creeper growing up the wall of this high rise.

Surprisingly the best place to leave the train to see Newtown is Newtown Station and it was quite impressive. This was a nice welcome. 

King Street and Enmore Road was once a very busy tram intersection before the Sydney tram removal crime was committed. 

We were looking for somewhere for brunch with an outdoor table and it was very slim pickings. We walked in both directions from the station, came across a Greek church giving out free lunches to Greek looking men. We looked too well nourished to take advantage of some Greek food.

I didn't take a photo but the Cafe Newtown proved very satisfactory. The traffic noise was quite awful though and honestly, while Newtown no doubt buzzes at night, we didn't find it very interesting. Not to  say I am not glad we visited.

Our train back to our hotel paused at Circular Quay Station. There wouldn't be too many stations with such views from the train window.

While R rested in the afternoon, I finished checking tram traffic light priority for the L2/3 by travelling north along George Street to Circular Quay and caught the train back.

 

On the Saturday it was to be my birthday. As a gift R had booked us for a Wednesday dinner at Sydney Tower, formerly Centre Point Tower. After a perfunctory security screening we zoomed up the shaft to the smorgasbord restaurant on the 82nd floor.

It didn't matter which direction we looked, the views were stunning. When I say which direction, the diners are rotating around on a circular platform. There was a low ledge where we warned not place anything there as it would we would rotate away. When we went to choose our food, we had to note that we were in area number 2, as the food area did not rotate. Here is short clip to demonstrate.

R had cleverly chosen the dining time of 6.30, which meant during the one hour rotation we began in daylight and the hour later, the sun had set and it was dark.

St Mary's Cathedral.

The marvellous Queen Victoria Building. Interior photos in a later post.

Nice. The food was fine but really it is about the experience. 

Unused ticket windows. Most people use a stored value Opal card to travel, as we did.

The war memorial as we trudged up the hill to our digs.