Sydney Day 3

Over the the lunch the day before, it was suggested to us that we might like to see the Banksy exhibition at Sydney Town Hall. That evening after returning to our digs after our light Portuguese dinner, I booked tickets for 11 the next day. We arrived a bit early and having walked from our hotel, my arthritis had really kicked in and I had to find a seat with with a backrest for a few minutes. We were let in early.

After the exhibition we walked on to Darling Harbour, once a must see place for visitors to Sydney. We walked up a long ramp and I had a suspicion there was a lift. R confirmed it once we reached the top. 

Darling Harbour was just a large space with nothing there aside from construction hoardings. The Chinese Garden is still there but we've seen that a couple of times, as nice as it is. 

So, nothing to see here. The L1 tram is on the other side. We'll catch that back to the city and make our way back to our hotel. But before we reached the tram stop, there was a cab rank. Nodding towards the rank I said, "Yes?" R replied, "Yes". 

The taxi driver was very chatty, and after he learnt we were tourists, went on about various places. He said some American tourists like to see the fish markets at 5am. Would we like to do that? I remained silent. He kept banging about various tourist places in Sydney and I had tuned out until he said, 'And they walk a pig around'. I was now focused. I had a name and a suburb and I investigated once back at our hotel. 

That evening we were a bit exited about our expected dinner venue, the Masala Bowl, Pitt Street in Sydney. If the staff had set out to annoy us, the succeeded very well and I think for only the second time we've ever walked out of a restaurant after ordering. I think it was our fourth visit to Masala Bowl and the last. We were very disappointed.

We had some fine Thai food at the restaurant at the bottom of our hotel, which is also a training school for restaurant staff and chefs.

A morning visitor, tame enough to sit on R's hand while we tried to feed it some dry cracker crumbs, which is all we had to feed it. The bird hurt his skin but didn't puncture it. This Polly variation did not want a cracker. 

I never understood what this was about as we entered the Banksy exhibition.

Aside from this kind of Banksy work, I did not know he had created many works of art that sell for great sums of money, enough money for him to buy a large boat to rescue refuges in the Mediterranean. (I can't believe my fingers got the spelling of Meditteranian correct. Lol, I didn't do it a second time).

 

This may have been my favourite.

This is cutting. Have you seen the clip of the naked Vietnamese child running after being covered in napalm? 

 A plainer soup variety than Warhol's Campbell's Soup.

I remember John Gray of Wales putting up this photo once. I didn't realise it was a Banksy. 

You can't really see the water action in the photo but the Darling Harbour fountain was working with visibly hundreds of tourists flocking to see it in action, as you can see in the photo. There isn't too much bad about the tourist areas of Sydney, but from its first inception decades ago, Darling Harbour has been a big fail. 

Cycle lanes are being built in Oxford Street, along with drainage renewal, but let's just blame the cycling lanes for the disruptions. The lineal work site was so locked down, fenced off and guarded, what really is the point of these signs? Ridiculous overkill.