Day 37: Rigaletto

When planning a tour of Australia, it's intuitively obvious to the most casual observer that Sydney must be on the list of places to experience.  With the bridge and the opera house and the botanical gardens and the harbour--there's just so much to be seen and done here!

That being said, when you plan a trip with 8 children and you know what you (collectively) like and you know what you (individually) can handle and you know that Sydney isn't the best idea--it's okay to just skip it.

Yes the opera house was incredible.  Yes seeing Rigoletto will be something that we will all remember forever.  But we could all have done without trapesing through the city.  We could have all handled eating breakfast and lunch instead of running around crazy searching a practically deserted city for food. (What Mall in their right mind isn't open on a Saturday afternoon!?!)  I could really do without the two blisters that now adorn my swollen pinky toes.

Maybe I'm just tired.  (Maybe??!!! hahahaha It's 2:00 AM and we just got back in to the hostel!)

Today was just really...weird.  See, for the last 2-3 years, I've been scrimping and saving every penny nickle and dime for this trip and today money was flowing from our account like water from a hose!  There's just something incredibly disconcerting about that.  Yes that's why we worked so hard.  Yes I was planning on spending that money here.  No there's no problem with that.  The thing is, I squeeze every penny with so much force that it's actually physically painful to have so many of them fly from my grasp at once.  My hands ache.

Now that I'm thinking about it, we really did have a great time today.  Seeing the opera house first hand was neat--but the little kids just weren't that impressed.  I blame CGI.  What they were impressed by was the little boat dock behind the opera house.  It's not attached at all to land, it just floats there held in by pillars on all sides that have been sunk into the ocean floor.  It was fascinating to them!

Then there were the trees!  The Royal Botanical Garden Park was pretty impressive.  There were so many really neat trees!  Only thing is, you're not supposed to climb them!  REALLY?!  You have big beautiful amazing trees and we're just supposed to look and say, "Hum, neat tree" ?!?!  It was practically torture!  Since we couldn't climb them we really didn't think to take pictures of them either.  The littles finally settled for picking up sticks and leaves and creating imaginary tacos since we couldn't find any real food to eat.

Then there was this.  No where else in the world have I ever been to a park with a gigantic concrete structure that had a sign attached asking you to not play on it.  Really?!  It was torture.

We did make an exception for this one picture.  And we did play in the bamboo--partly because it looked just like this scene from LOST but mainly because I was trying to hide from the kids and their incessant "Mama! Mama! Mama!" chant.  Seriously I don't know how their little mouths can say that word as often, fast and whinily as they do.  Pi finally forbade any of them from saying that word for the rest of the day.  It was pretty funny watching them try to figure out other things to call me to get my attention.  Interestingly, none of them called me by my given name.

We  did get to go into an aboriginal art store where the kids found some neat things to buy.  And we finally found a mall that had a food court that was open--naturally it was at the opposite end of town from the Opera House.  Come to find out the city up near the House is pretty vacant on Saturday mornings.  Who knew?

Our first stop after the opera house and the botanical garden was at the bank to see if our card was fixed.  We stuck it in the ATM and it spit money out at us.  We took it and ran half afraid a hand was going to come out of the machine and say, "Oh my mistake, give that back!"  It's funny how nervous you get about money when you don't have access to any for a few hours!

We trekked back to get our cars when we realized how late it was getting.  One thing you have to know about traveling around the major cities here in Oz is this, everything is super far away!  It literally takes an hour to get anywhere!  It's ridiculous!  Knowing that, we planned on 3 hours to get the kids to the Aviles' home and back.  In spite of our great planning and execution, we were still 15 minutes late for the show!  So obnoxious!!

E was thrilled though!  We had to sit in the 'naughty box' until intermission (they call it something else here but I can't remember what at the moment) and E had the best seat!  I preferred our actual seats and here's a little tip for you.  When you go to buy tickets you need to know that you're able to see the translation from everywhere in the theater except all the way up front.  The guy tried to get us to by more expensive tickets by telling us we wouldn't be able to see the translations from where we were but that was an outright lie.

Ooh, that brings me to a little rant.  The people here in Sydney are really not helpful at all!  I went--of all places--to the information desk as soon as we parked under the House.  See, I put my credit card into the slot, like it said to do on the machine, but it didn't spit out a ticket.  It did for pi, but not for me.  So I went to the desk to make sure everything was good to go.  Not only did the woman not know, but I swear she pretended to call someone to ask about it only to tell us afterwords that she really just didn't know what to tell us to do and that, basically, we were on our own because, even though it says "Opera House Parking" the company who runs the parking garage is in no way affiliated with the actual Sydney Opera House itself. (In the end we learned--from a parking attendant who wasn't on duty when we came in to the garage--that when you stick your card in like that, you don't need a ticket.  It's all automatic!  It's the most advanced thing I've seen in country to date!)

I forgot to snap a pic of the Aviles family so I borrowed this one off of FB.  Thanks again for all your help!

Okay, gotta end on a good note.  The littles were super excited to stay in and watch a movie and have pizza for dinner and their night at the Aviles' didn't disappoint.  How amazing for complete strangers to offer to babysit FIVE KIDS for 7 hours!!  The kids had a fantastic time and hopefully when they come back to the States we'll be able to return the favor!

Going to church with the Deaf group tomorrow! I  can't wait!!!