No trip to Sydney is complete without a night at the Opera House. They do real opera here but I wouldn’t go to see it if it was free. So we went to see an Irish/American band, The Gloaming, led by a quite amazing fiddler, one Martin Hayes. An excellent, really unusual, group, singing in Irish, but not cheap at $69 each plus that very Australian concept of a separate additional booking fee even though we bought tickets for cash at the Box Office. In a reversal of normal modern life, the booking fee was higher if you bought online. The logic escapes me.

Here is the Opera House at sunset, every bit as spectacular as you could hope for, inside and out. A true triumph of design, well deserving its iconic status. In the middleground is the Opera Bar which doesn’t look like any other opera bar that I’ve seen. And in the foreground the other half of the Vulcan Spirit crew, all dressed up for a very rare night on the town (cruisers are normally in bed by 2100hrs):

 

 

One night of culture @$150 for 90 minutes is enough, we reckon. It the pictures for us next.