Most of my photos are done on my iPhone, but occasionally my sidekick will bring his good camera. I just found these pictures today. We walked around Sydney a lot in 5 days. The highlights included: the coastal walk Bondi-Coogee on a warm day, Coogee-Bondi on a blustery cold day, walking across the bridge (free) in lieu of the expensive bridge climb, waking up early and hitting the Sydney fish market, the botanical gardens, a night at the symphony at Sydney Opera house, and trying interesting cuisine. Carmen was playing at the Opera house too, but I didn’t know so I didn’t have tickets and it was too late. It looked absolutely awesome in the brochure. Also, we played Carmen in high school and we “took state” orchestra with that piece so I really wanted to go. I did figure I could sneak in and play along since I was wearing all black anyway. I like to attend world class performances any time I can. If you think they must be too expensive, think again. I have heard the most famous violinists for not much more than you’d pay for a movie ticket. You can pay a lot to sit in “the right” seats, but there are seats at many price points and it is something to consider if you want an experience. Classical musicians truly are underpaid and incredibly talented.
We went to a football game in Salt Lake City this weekend. I wasn’t going to go until the last moment since my kids would miss 2 days of school and a Thursday night was highly inconvenient. Anyway, I dragged the 4th grader along to keep me company on the 5 hour drive from Boise. We had a blast meeting with family for the football game and then planned on hiking up in the Big Cottonwood Canyon of Salt Lake City on Friday morning with just the 2 of us. Well, the little one cried that she was too tired and just wanted to go home. We compromised and decided to go shopping in downtown. By shopping, I mean walking around the shops before the 5 hour return. When we got downtown, we discovered it was the Comic Con Convention. My interest was peaked to go pass by and see what interesting people we could observe. Now, Comic Con is probably the least likely place on the planet I would intentionally attend, but I couldn’t resist since we were already there. Well, I discovered that Henry Winkler was there among other “celebs,” I said: THE FONZ??? Yes… Okay, I’ll go see. Well, $40 to get my picture taken with him. Um… NO! I wouldn’t pay 40 bucks to have my picture taken with anybody. I’ll only pay that for an entry fee to hike a park and take a picture with a tree. Comic Con was interesting, but mostly I find most of that stuff as dry as they would find a hiking blog. 🤓 We didn’t have much time there, but it was pretty epic for that sort of thing.
