After Alan and Lorna arrived and got over their jetlag, we have spent the last few days wandering around the city trying to get used to where everything is and the one thing that has surprised us is just how compact everything in the city is.

On Monday, we completed a round trip on the monorail just to see where it goes to (back where it started, obviously) and spent a couple of hours walking around Hyde Park, The Domain and the Botanical Gardens until we came out at Mrs. Macquarie's point, where we saw the classic view of the opera house with the harbour bridge behind it. We walked up around the top of the gardens to the opera house to get a closer view, which was the first time we had seen it during the day, and at first we were a little surprised at just how normal it looked without all the lights. Alan approached it with typical enthusiasm: "it's a lot smaller than I thought it would be". We headed out to the Spanish quarter for dinner to get some tapas and deal with the waiter's bemused impression as we ordered almost everything on the menu!

Yesterday we had a look around Darling Harbour, in and out of all the shops and after some lunch in one of the many cafes, we headed to the aquarium. Even though this was the third one we had been into, it was still amazing to see the sharks up so close and see all the wildlife that thrives under the water. It still seems a little odd though to come inside from weather that is hovering amongst the high thirties, to see penguins messing around on the ice!! Lorna was especially pleased to see this enclosure as it meant she could get a photo of herself with the school penguin (don't ask) next to the real life ones.

Today we headed back to Darling Harbour again to check out a few of the things that we didn't get around to yesterday and first stop was the Chinese Gardens.

It was a truly surreal experience going from the hustle and bustle of the city, to the tranquility and calmness of the gardens, with a huge lake in the middle being fed by a couple of waterfalls. We even saw a couple of people that had dressed up in traditional Chinese clothes to walk around and have their photos taken, which looked like a good idea, but we didn't really fancy looking that daft!! We wandered around for a couple of hours before going into the tearooms to get some Chinese tea (no, really!!) and to try some biscuits. The less said about the latter, the better!

When we left the gardens, we headed around to the Aboriginal and Outback Centre to check out all the didgeridoos and traditional artwork. They were pretty cool, but none of us could see how they could justify charging up to $2000 for paintings that were essentially just dots on canvas, which resembled things that playschool kids could do!

After we managed to drag Lorna away from the many socks on display, we made our way to the Maritime Museum - unaware that there was a huge Viking exhibition on which Alan would insist on inspecting everything on display! That said, there were lots of interesting (and some not so interesting) things to look at and interact with, and we spent a couple of hours walking around the museum. The highlight though was definitely the boat that was made entirely of beer cans! Then once again it was time to head back to the apartment, where we made use of our first oven in almost two months, by cooking enough lasagne to feed half of Australia.

Tomorrow we are heading out to one of the most iconic places in the country: Bondi beach.