Day 3, Sydney Opera House and Show

Before I get into today’s post, here are three things that rock about Sydney and three things that suck…seems fitting given this is the third day we’ve been here.

Rock:

1) The Opera House and the architectural brilliance that it is!

2) My eye-shadow from Sephora that I bought before this trip!

3) Seeing the Australian Ballet in the production of Edward Scissorhands!

Suck:

1) The shoe stores. As we’ve walked around the past couple of days I’ve noticed the Aussies have some mighty ugly shoes. Anyone who knows me knows I’m a “shoe whore” and can’t visit a city without returning with several pairs (Uggs excluded in this case). However, we hit at least four shoe stores today and I’ve never been so turned off in my life. At one point I picked up and pair and looked at Zeus and said, “Can you imagine if I came home with a pair of these?” At which he promptly responded “Katy would cut off your feet” and then I quickly added “I would deserve it!”

2) Sydney is like Manhattan only with a bunch of hills that SUCK to walk up and down; especially in heels and the rain! All though my ass will be so hard when I return you can bounce a quarter off of it!

3) The food. It is at this moment that I’d like to take a second and pay homage to the wonderful chefs of the family:

· Mom- you know I love the spaghetti and green beans!

· Mother in law Miriam- Ropa Vieja forever!

· Momma Debbie- can I get a little crawfish pie?!

I have one word Sydney: “Tony’s.” Buy it by the barrel and use it in copious amounts. While the food is fine, it just has no taste and we come from homes that use all sorts of ingredients and flavors when cooking so everything here so far is blah.

Moving along…even though we woke up this morning and the sky was gray, it wasn’t raining. We thought we might actually have a dry, if not dreary day, but we were proven wrong. It began to rain so we got a late start today. However, even though the wind blew and rain came at us, we soldiered on and went to the Sydney Opera House. It was so cool. We took pictures walking up (I think my dancer friends will appreciate one) and did an hour-long tour in which we learned the opera house took 16 years (instead of 3) to build; costs $102 million (instead of $7 million); has 1000 rehearsal halls/warm up rooms; is fully sustainable with back up power, their own medical and police units, plumbers, engineers and security guards; has more than 700 employees; holds performances every night; has 200 stairs to climb to get to the top inside the actual building; is a building within a building; takes 2.1 seconds to fill the concert hall with music; the organ in the concert hall is the largest in the world comprised of 10,000 pipes; takes 1.33 seconds to fill the opera house with music; the seats are made of birch wood and are filled with lambs wool (so comfortable- not a dance reference); uses elevators to load in musical theatre sets b/c…the opera theatre/dance theatre has no wings and thus employees the use of “catchers” to literally catch the dancers as they jete off the stage because otherwise they hit the cement wall! BRILLIANT I say; b/c who wouldn’t want to be caught leaping off stage into the arms of a hunky Aussie man right?! WRONG…. Allow me to say that Australia has totally mislead the entire world with false advertising that it is comprised of blonde hair, blue eyed hotties, b/c I haven’t seen a dame one!

Moving along…after our morning/early afternoon at the Opera House which jazzed us (no dance pun intended) for the upcoming performance, we grabbed a bite to eat at Hungry Jacks…a.k.a. Burger King (apparently BK was trademarked already when they expanded to Australia and had to choose another name)…and it was cheap but tasty…did I mention everything is outrageously expensive?! Anyway, following, we hit Pitt Street for some shopping. I finally found my jacket. Super cute, cream, comes to mid thigh…I’m so rocking it, only you won’t get to see it until it debuts this fall/winter in Florida.

After a very long day of trudging up and down hills in the rain and wind (this was by far the worse weather day) we retreated to the hotel to get ready for the big performance…

Prior to coming out we had discussed seeing a performance at the Opera House. However when I saw it was Edward Scissorhands I thought “ehhh, not so sure I want to see that.” If you’re like me, I wasn’t so much a fan of the movie so I couldn’t imagine what the opera would be like. However, when I learned it was a dance performance, I said “sign me up and get me tickets.” It was totally well worth it. The male principal was great. He danced flawlessly with scissors on his hands. The female principal was ok, as I was distracted by a lead who was long and leggy and clearly a ballerina in all other performances I have no doubt, but her physique was phenomenal. And then there was the “corps de shrubs” a.k.a. the dancing topiaries. For those who might not know, the rest of the supporting cast in a ballet is called the corps de ballet, in this case, it was the “corps de shrubs” as these dancers literally wore costumes (head pieces where you couldn’t see the face) of greenery and danced perfectly timed, placed and spaced choreography around Edward and his lady. It was wonderful! I honestly could not have asked for a better performance at the Sydney Opera House. It was truly a once in a lifetime memory that I’ll never forget and will always treasure and appreciate.

It’s late and we’re turning in now. Zeus has cleverly created a video for your enjoyment. Whoever can tell me how many times the word “ginormous” is said, will get a special prize upon our return.

Until tomorrow… Mandy & Zeus.

P.S. Eric- do you really think Zeus could write this much and so eloquently about dance?

Tags: Sydney Opera House is incredible

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 9:47 am and is filed under Friends & Family, Vacation & Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.