We had breakfast in the Princess Grill one last time before disembarking and said "Good-bye" to Lennox and the other waiters. It was easy to find all our luggage when we left the ship, but the line through customs and immigration was about fifteen minutes long. Made it through and went to get in the taxi line which wasn't too bad. Cabs were pulling up fairly quickly while we waited. We thought that we had way too much luggage on this trip, but we had less than other people we saw and got a sedan-sized cab before some of the people in front of us who needed to wait for mini-vans for their luggage.

We arrived at the InterContinental by 10 a.m. and before our room was ready. We dropped the luggage with the bell hop, got a walking map from the concierge, and left to start exploring the city. The Opera House is just a short walk from the hotel so we walked there first to look around. We went to the Opera House to pick up our will-call tickets for the nights' show of La Bohème. I had booked them online from home. Paula Kay had reserved and we had prepaid for a tour of the Opera House, but we had scheduled it for tomorrow. We went to the service desk there and asked if we could change that tour to today since we had time, and it was no problem for them to do that. We joined a tour that started a few minutes later at 10:30.

The tour took us to just a few of the 1,000 rooms in the Opera House. We saw the theatre we were going to later and the bigger concert hall. We entered the theatre by the door closest to our seats which was nice to see in advance, too. The guide was friendly and had a good knowledge of the history of the amazing building which is just beautiful. They have what I have decided is my second most favorite elevator in the whole world. It works with hydraulics and has no cables to pull the car up. It is lifted from the bottom. To show this off, the car was built with no top so you can see up to where you are going (or where you have been) and you can see the people in the elevator when you are waiting for it from a floor above.

Back at the hotel, the room was still not ready, but the desk clerk says that it is on "rush". We had lunch in the hotel lobby which was just okay. It was good that we weren't very hungry. We shared a pizza which was rather odd--the pizza was odd, not the fact that we shared it. After lunch, we left to find the Rocks Walking tour that we had prebooked with Paula Kay. The starting point for it was a twenty-minute walk away, but pretty easy to find. There are quite a few hills in this seaside town which I did not expect.

The Rocks Walking Tour was mostly a history lesson about the time when the Europeans were just beginning to settle in Australia. Our guide was knowledgeable and made the lessons interesting on the one and one-half hour tour. It is hot here and we were glad that we had remembered to get a bottle of water before the tour began.

Back at the hotel again, and we finally got into the room at about the normal check-in time. We had a little while to rest before getting ready for dinner and the opera. While we were out this morning, we made a dinner reservation at Buckley's, and we got there just in time. It's a very busy place with a few people having dinner, but most having drinks. The food was fine and we ordered local drinks. I liked my Cockfighter's Ghost shiraz and Phil liked his Jack of Spades porter.

We enjoyed La Bohème which took us back to 19th century Paris for a story of friendship, love, desperation, intrigue and ultimately sadness and loss. Expecting to see the surtitles only above the stage, I was a little worried about keeping up with the story line. As it turned out, they displayed them in several locations including one that was right by our seats. As we were leaving the theatre, we could hear lots of loud explosions. There was a fireworks display going on on the water beside the Opera House. We saw just a few of the last illuminations as we were going down the steps leaving the building.

A short stroll took us back to the hotel for the night. There were lots of people out near the bay, but as we got farther away, we did not see very many others. All in all a very busy day with lots of sightseeing.