Sydney World Pride 2023

[Originally sent as email travelogue, Wedesday, March 8, 10:45 am Pacific Standard Time.] Saturday, February 25: Fleurs de Villees PRIDE I really, really love this shot, combining iconography of both World Pride and the City of Sydney itself: fabulousness all around! World Pride in Sydney 2023 took what is usually one annual weekend culminating in the Saturday night Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, and expanded it to fully 17 days of Pride events. When I first learned that Sydney would be hosting World Pride in 2023, we were there for our previous visit, in 2020. I immediately made a note that I would thus want to return in three years for that very reason, having no idea that a pandemic would leave us wondering for a good two years or more how plausible a return that soon would even be. For a long time, I also assumed “World Pride” was just a jumbo version of “regular Pride,” or in this instance Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. But, once there was an established Sydney World Pride 2023 website, I learned that the 17-day festival would be associated with two signature events: the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade on Saturday February 25; and a World Pride March of 50,000 people across the Sydney Harbour Bridge (!) on Sunday of the following weekend, March 5.  So, would we stay in Sydney for eight days? do the Parade but not the March? visit Sydney twice on two separate weekends, filling the days in between with one of our other destinations? When I posed these options to Shobhit, he declared we shall take that final choice. Neither of us felt we needed to be in Sydney for over a week straight, but we did still want to experience those two major events.

As I just noted, World Pride consisted of 17 days of countless events, beginning with an opening ceremony February 17 in which the Sydney Opera House was lit up in Progress Pride colors. Sydney is more than a day ahead of us, so that was February 16 at home in Seattle, where I was when this happened; we didn’t even leave for our first destination, Brisbane, until Sunday, February 19. We spent a cumulative total of six nights in Sydney, with our time there overlapping with eight calendar dates—less than half the total length of World Pride. We still managed to experience a small sampling of the countless events, though, although we paid for tickets into only one, which had been high on my list: “Fleurs de Villes PRIDE,” a collection of outfits or gowns made out of floral arrangements. I’ve known about Fleurs de Villes for a couple of years now, thanks to two years of Christmas floral displays they have done at Pacific Place in Seattlle—at no charge; the displays are just out in the common area on the ground floor of the mall. They do these floral displays with different themes in many different cities, it turns out, including a series of Pride arrangements they did for Vancouver Pride at the end of July last summer. Those were spread all over downtown Vancouver, B.C., with no charge to view them either. I have no idea why we had to pay to see them in Sydney, unless there were some charity element in connection with the queer designers all the floral arrangements were celebrating. These were all gathered in “The Calyx,” the conservatory located inside the Royal Botanic Garden. It cost around twenty bucks AUD to get in, so it still wasn’t all that big a deal, and honestly worth the cost. We went in there while walking through the Royal Botanic Garden park after buying our Sydney Opera House tour tickets on Saturday February 25, so this was a World Pride event we knocked out quite quickly. We admired the 15 or so beautiful floral “outfits” or gowns,  and voted for our favorite one.

Saturday, February 25: 46th Annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras And finally: the main event—of both World Pride, and our entire Australian vacation: Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras! This was actually their first year back with a parade since 2020; even last year they were reduced to holding it at the Sydney Cricket Ground to cut down on crowds. Between that and it being World Pride, we really should have known it would be bigger than ever this year, but we arrived on Oxford Street “only” an hour early and the crowd was already seven people deep along the sidewalks behind the barricade fences. Shobhit was convinced that over time, we would eventually squeeze our way to the front of the crowd. I’d say we made it about halfway, maybe two thirds of the way there, by the time the parade ended, with its total 208 contingents, and an estimated 12,500 marching. (I could not for the life of me find any estimate of crowd size, although I did find sources estimating 500,000 as recently as 2019. Either wayI figure it safe to say it was in the hundreds of thousands.) Especially at the start of the parade, though, we were pretty far back from the street due to the crowd. This was one of many reasons I was really glad to have upgraded my iPhone shortly before we left for this vacation: even from that far away, raising my hands as far as I could above other people’s heads, I still managed to get some pretty damned good pictures. I also got a bunch of bad ones that I later deleted, of course, but that happens anyway. As with Pride Parades in the States, this parade kicked off with the traditional “Dykes on Bikes” contingent, and in a couple of cases, due to tracking the shot as a bike whizzed by, I got great shots with the background blurred by the passing riders in focus. I suppose "kicked off" sort of depends on how you define it: even preceding the Dykes on Bikes was the "Welcome to Country and Smoking Ceremony" by an Aboriginal man walking the parade route, as evidently happens at all of these parades.

I meant to get a better selfie with just myself and Shobhit during the parade, and never got around to it. The closest I got was this shot with Shobhit and a lesbian standing behind us who was eager to tell us how her soon-to-be wife has been to the United States. I think she had had a few drinks, but in all fairness to her, she was never obnoxious-drunk like the group of three or four straight couples behind us for much of the parade, a couple of them (both men) so wasted they stumbled into us—and into the lesbian couple—multiple times. There was yet another guy near us for a while who asked us for advice on what to do about his boyfriend of just a few months, who was hanging out with other friends instead of coming to the parade with him as promised. He was standing close enough to us that we could see the unhinged texts the guy was sending his boyfriend, things like "fuck you" and "have a nice life." It all seemed . . . very stable!

Yes! I admit it! I have a thing for hot young men! To such a degree, in fact, that for every single Pride parade or festival I attend, I have a “Random Hot Guys” photo album on Flickr, which I have been curating since 2005. What I love about this shot, among my very favorites from the parade, is how it demonstrates that I was clearly not alone in this particular interest. So. Should I be self-conscious about the fact that most of these men are now easily half my age? . . . Nah!

In 2023, just as in 2020, my favorite float in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade was the Sydney Opera House float. It seems always to be a neon outline of the Opera House’s official logo, just with different material occupying the spaces inside.

Saturday, March 4: "Pride Village": Oxford Street Party Fast-forward one full week: these “Pride Villages” were set up the weekends of both Mardi Gras and the World Pride March, much bigger on the second weekend because Oxford was reserved for the parade the first weekend—but it was not until Saturday of our second weekend in Sydney, the day of our arrival from Adelaide, that we managed to get down there to check it out.

In fact, we kind of had to rush down to Oxford Street as soon as we were checked into The York, our second Sydney hotel, as we had only until 4:00 Saturday afternoon to pick up the wristband that was supposed to grant us entry into the World Pride March across the Sydney Harbour Bridge the next day. The originally published dates for wristband pickup were just Wednesday or Thursday February 28 or March 1, and I had to email them about alternate arrangements because we would not be in Sydney those dates—and they responded that we could pick them up Saturday the day before the march. We made it down there shortly after 3:00, about 50 minutes to spare. The emails from my registry for the march on the World Pride Sydney website directed us to the “World Pride Info Booth” at the north end of the “Pride Village” (or Oxford Street Party) on Oxford Street, the link provided using a street address that turned out to be a nondescript, closed door next to what appeared to be a relatively standard restaurant. I think the address was maybe just the closest reference point, though, because once we found someone to ask where the info booth actually was, we were directed to an actual booth set up in a public space area maybe a quarter block up the road. The line already there was very long. We were standing in direct sunlight and, in my haste to get down there by 4:00, I did not think to put on any sunscreen. Thankfully I didn’t burn. When we got to the front of the line, where two people were inside the booth checking people in and handing out wristbands, and another two were taking people on either side of the booth, the young woman with an iPad that I came up to took one look at me and said, “You look stressed!” Funny. It was at that point I was no longer stressed, finally having made it to the front of the line in time! I’m guessing now that they continued handing out their wristbands well past 4:00. Anyway I took the above “portrait shot” photo of my Sydney World Pride March wristband from our 15th-floor hotel patio in the early evening the next day, well after the march itself was done.

Relieved to have our wristbands, Shobhit and I took our time meandering back through the Oxford Street Party, almost immediately going into a nearby beer garden to buy a seriously overpriced drink, which turned out to be a small can with only 4.5% alcohol for $14 (that’s about $9 USD—still way too much). But! The beer garden also had this little selfie booth, and that was where we got this spectacular photo. I do have to credit the kindness of a stranger also, though, because a guy saw me aiming my phone for a selfie and then offered to take the photo for us, and thus getting a far better shot than I could have gotten as a selfie. He actually took several, which was also nice because this was by far the best of them. The guy had an American accent, and we discovered both our groups were visiting from the States. I asked where they were from, and they said Washington, D.C.  “Maybe we’ll see you there in 2025!” said the guy who took our photo—because that is when D.C. will be hosting World Pride, which usually happens every two years. Hmm, maybe! I didn’t even know until recently that D.C. was hosting next, and that’s a hell of a lot closer than Sydney, isn’t it? Although I truly cannot imagine the city of Washington, D.C. openly engaging with World Pride with the stunning level of enthusiasm that Sydney did—not even if we still have a Democratic majority in Congress (and Congress exerts control over that city in a deeply ironically undemocratic way). I still think returning there for my third visit for World Pride would be really fun. Especially since, as it happened, my first-ever visit there had been in 2000, for the Millennium March on Washington for gay rights.

During our time in that same beer garden, Shobhit spied this person sitting at a nearby table and offered a compliment on that outfit. The person chatted with us for a bit, and then Shobhit asked if I wanted my picture taken together. Oh sure, what the hell!

Another picture Shobhit took, after some minor grocery shopping on our way back to the hotel where we made ourselves lunch, and then returning to the Oxford Street Party about four hours later, at 10:00. It was my idea to pose here; it was Shobhit’s idea for me to stretch my arms out, which really makes the pose. This may very well be my favorite photo from all of World Pride.

Still at the Oxford Street Party, watching a live performance by a very talented singer I had never heard of named Samantha Jade—while Shobhit reads my email travelogue of our days in Adelaide on his phone. (I had just written it up at our hotel room that afternoon.)

Sunday, March 5: Sydney World Pride March 2023 It wasn’t until Saturday, when we picked up our wristbands, that I learned the Sydney World Pride March would cross southbound rather than the other way around—from North Sydney Station, two stops after the bridge on the train. The woman who gave us our wristbands told us that transit would be free for anyone wearing one. Two different people we found to ask about it at Wynyard Station didn’t have a clue what the hell we were talking about. The machine at the station that we were supposed to use to “top up” our Opal Cards would not work. Shobhit managed to zip through one of the tap gates behind someone else, but the multiple times I tried, I was not fast enough. But then finally a lady paid to go through and said I could walk through with her. It was particularly fun riding the train northbound across the Sydney Harbour Bridge—it being predictably packed like sardines notwithstanding—as the World Pride March had already begun, and we passed marchers heading south along the closed traffic lanes of the bridge, some waving back and forth.

The whole means of organizing the Pride March, which stretched about two and a half miles (four km) from North Sydney Station to the park by Royal Botanic Gardens, was rather interesting. Even with signs and announcements that only people with wristbands could walk across, not one person was actually checked—the throng was far too thick for there to be any time for that. Our registration even had a “timed entry” of 9:10 a.m,, with the suggestion that we arrive half an hour before that, which indeed we did—barely. But the crowds were so huge then that we just moved with it like a human river, out of North Sydney Station, right onto the street and onto Pacific Highway, and then merging by foot onto the Sydney Harbour Bridge. There’s also a traffic tunnel that goes under the harbor, luckily for any non-marchers who needed to get across the water on Sunday morning.

Actual-selfie time! The Harbour Bridge is well in the background above Shobhit’s head. In the background above my head is the sort of satellite-skyline—one of several in greater Sydney—of North Sydney.

Once across to the south end of the bridge, the crowd veered left and walked along the Cahill Expressway (when I heard locals using this word, all I would ever hear was “Call” Expressway) due east to the park area of Royal Botanic Garden.

I found this couple in the park once we got there and immediately asked If I could take their picture. There was a few food booths, and a stage with no performers on it (yet?), but at about 10 a.m. this couple was the most exciting thing in the park.

Sunday, March 5: "Pride Village" Oxford Street Party We did walk straight from the Royal Botanic Garden back to the Oxford Street Party, along with the throng, as Oxford was far more happening than the park. But, we’d already gone twice and it would stay basically the same, so we walked back to the hotel again, stopping for some more light grocery shopping along the way. I spent some time editing photos (I have 83 shots from the March alone, as compared with 238 from the Mardi Gras Parade) and Shobhit prepared us lunch (I chopped some vegetables!). After exploring the Queen Victoria Building and Pitt Street Mall, we made one last trek over to Oxford Street, a bit mellower now that it was the final night of Pride Villages. Except when a couple of fabulous slinky-heads (or disco ball bots) walk by.

We walked the length of Oxford Street’s Pride Village and back one last time on Sunday evening, encountering this ballroom performance in the style of the FX series Pose on the main stage on our way back, complete with judges. (Pose actually honored a decades-long history of these kinds of performances, particularly with trans performers, so it’s actually more like Pose was in the style of this.)

Monday, March 6: Pride (R)evolution exhibit at State Library of New South Wales Again, World Pride consisted of countless events, ranging from free, to parties with tickets costing hundreds of dollars. The way I see it, we already contributed plenty to the Australian economy with the roughly $8,000 we spent on this entire, five-stop trip. Granted, when it comes to the local Australian queer community, we contributed almost nothing to that economy. Sorry, queers! We did meet multiple gay flight attendants, does that count?? We even met one from London at a liquor store on Oxford Street, but we didn’t give him any money. At least our plane tickets pay the salaries of the ones on our flights, right? #queersolidarity So anyway. On Monday, getting there about an hour before we were to take the guided tour at the nearby Sydney Opera House, we went to the State Library of New South Wales, which has this really great, free exhibit on the history of Pride in Sydney and the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. We actually learned about the exhibit from the older lady who sat in the aisle seat next to us on the flight from Sydney to Adelaide on Monday, February 27. She said she had marched in many Mardi Gras parades over the years—she now walks with a cane so can’t anymore—and with the exhibit’s video footage of parades over the years, she saw herself in it more than once! I thought that was very cool, and even looked for her in the footage, but having met her briefly just that once, of course I had no way of recognizing a much younger version of her. The exhibit was well worth going to in its own right. Is well worth going to: stretching far beyond the dates of World Pride, this one will remain at the State Library of New South Wales through July 9! (Click here to return to first traelogue for this trip to Australia: Brisbane, Gold Coast)

Sydney 2023

[Originally sent as email travelogue, Tuesday, March 7, 9:09 am Pacific Standard Time, from Los Angeles International Airport. At that time it was 3:09 am Australian Eastern Daylight Time in Sydney—the time my body had gotten used to.] Friday, February 24 Quick note on timing for this trip: We went to Sydney two different times, three nights each on separate consecutive weekends. Friday-Monday February 24-27 was timed for the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade on Saturday the 25th; Saturday-Tuesday March 4-7 was timed for the Sydney World Pride March across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday the 5th. I have already sent emails detailing our time in Brisbane, where we went first; then Kangaroo Island in South Australia, which we did after our first weekend in Sydney; and Adelaide, where we spent the last three nights of the five in South Australia between the two weekends in Sydney. I just waited to send combined travelogues for both weekends in Sydney, this one focusing on the many non-Pride-related things we did. For instance: where we stayed at a different hotel each weekend. The gray tower in the center-background of the above shot is Meriton Suites Campbell Street, which happened to be where we had stayed for our first visit to Sydney in 2020 (that one being a consecutive six nights), and was where we chose again for our first weekend this time around. This had to do with both the location, just three blocks or so from Central Station; its relative proximity to the northwestern beginning of the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade route at Oxford & Liverpool Streets, half a mile away; and crucially, the inclusion of a kitchenette.

This is the back side of Meriton Suites Campbell Street, taken from a very narrow street just a block or so away and looking up at it—this was the side from which we got our view. As you can see, this building is in an area with several other buildings quite densely situated together, but given my deep love of tall urban environments, that hardly did anything to dampen my satisfaction with it.

Even better: after having gotten a room on floor 19 in 2020, we actually managed to get a unit on floor 31. We were much more proactive about requesting higher floors this time around, emailing each hotel in advance to make the request (invariably they said they would make note of the request but could make no guarantees) and then also requesting in person at check-in. I was beyond happy with the floor location of this unit, even though "floor 31" is misleading: this is one of those hotels that skips certain floor numbers in their numbering, with buttons going up to 39 even though the building only has 32 floors in reality. That's a 7 floor difference; subtract that from the "floor 31" we were on and that actually put us on the 24th floor. (That also put us on the 12th floor in 2020.) Whatever, either way it was still 12 floors higher than we had back in 2020! I was delighted, and so was Shobhit. This was the highest hotel room we got at any of the places we stayed in Australia.

Saturday, February 25 Our very first destination once we got settled into our hotel was very similar to what had been destination #1 after settling into our Sydney hotel in 2020—that year, we went straight to Sydney Tower, basically their version of the Space Needle, notably taller (1,014 ft vs 605 feet, and still the tallest tower in Sydney, ever since construction in 1981) but nowhere near as beautiful (but then, what observation tower is as beautiful as the Space Needle? none!). Anyway, that already having been done, there was no need to return there, although of course I still took plenty of photos of it this visit. So where did we go first this time instead? Crown Sydney, which had been under construction when we were in Sydney in 2020; was finished later that same year; and now stands as Sydney's tallest "building" (which technically excludes observation towers like Sydney Tower), at 890 ft (271.3 meters) tall. And check this out: not only does the Crown Sydney building have a public observatory, but it is free! I could hardly believe it, in spite of its built-in limitations and challenges: you can only sign up for timed-entry guided tours to the Sky Deck, occuring only between 6:30 and 9 a.m. Saturday through Wednesday each week, with slots only opening for the following week every Monday. As you can imagine, especially given the time difference when I was still in Seattle, I spent a lot of time checking to see when I could book this. When I managed to secure two slots for the 8:30 a.m. tour on Saturday the 25th, I nearly pissed my pants with excitement.

Crown Sydney, which is a mixed use building with both residential and hotel units, does the same shit with floor counts as the Meriton Suites does: the Sky Deck is supposedly on the 83rd floor; the building has 75 floors. Eight floors difference! So really the Sky Deck—which is surprisingly small in size (there were maybe 10 people in our 8:30 tour group) and faces only to the north—would thus actually be on the 73rd floor or so, being a few stories from the top. Not that I'm complaining! The observatory is 820 feet (250 meters) above the ground, and as you can see, the view was absolutely spectacular. It was totally worth the effort of getting secured timed entry slots, and even of getting up early enough to be there by 8:30.

We did a lot of walking on this particular Saturday, first walking to Crown Sydney (1.3 miles from our hotel), and then we walked over to the Sydney Opera House (another 2.5 miles because we walked along the shoreline instead of taking the more direct route) to inquire about tour tickets there. We just happened upon this rather amusing piece of public art along the way: Still Life with Stone and Car by Berlin-based artist Jimmie Durham in 2004, and apparently in this location since 2006.

We did manage to get the tour tickets at the Sydney Opera House, but we had to buy them for the next weekend—thankfully we were coming back! We then made our way through Sydney's Royal Botanic Garden which is directly south of the Opera House, stopping at a few places along the way, including a brief stint here, at The Sydney Fernery.

We left the Royal Botanic Garden, and by chance happened to walk past the Art Gallery of New South Wales, our attention getting caught by these odd giant clay sculptures just outside. Shobhit inquired about price; we discovered it was free; and we thought what the hell, why not go inside? There appears to have been a much older wing with more classic art in it which we missed entirely, but that's fine; we spent a little while in the modern wing which was packed with a bunch of very cool modern art, such as this piece made of about four shelves rendered into a "tower" with the use of mirrors. Another favorite was an upside-down world map made out of yarn. Plenty of others were very interesting and fun, making a stroll inside well worth our time.

This building, called The Exchange, we did not go inside, but I just wanted to walk by and see it: built in 2019, it now houses the City of Sydney Library. (Note the rainbow flag to the left. This sort of stuff was seen all over town for World Pride, which I loved.) I only learned about it because of a Twitter account I follow dedicated to interesting architecture from around the world.

Sunday, February 26 Beach day! Full disclosure: nude beach day, at a place called Obelisk Beach, located on the south shore of the small peninsula (one of a great many in Sydney) where Cobblers Beach, another nude beach, is also located on its north side—we went to that one back in 2020. This one is smaller and a bit more secluded, but still about an hour of public transit riding to get to (the very same buses, in fact, as those to Cobblers Beach). Our connecting bus didn't seem to be showing up, and a guy from Germany who had also been on our first bus struck up conversation with us while we were waiting, and when he ordered himself an Uber to get the rest of the way, he offered to let us ride there with him, which was very kind. He immediately parted ways with us as soon as we got to the beach, in case you're wondering. The beach, and spending time in the water there, was fantastic. We even had intention to come back do it once we returned to Sydney for our second weekend, but on the one day that could even be a possible option, we were no longer up for the long transit ride out there, especially on a day when the heat reached 100°F (37.7°C) with buses that may not have been air conditioned. We bagged the idea of returning in the end, and never did any beach wading again after this (although we did visit a couple of beaches on Kangaroo Island). So, our only real "beach days" this trip were the day trip we took from Brisbane to Gold Coast, and this day. Both were still fantastic though.

Saturday, March 4 And here we jump ahead to our second weekend in Sydney, having gone to South Australia (Kangaroo Island and Adelaide) the five nights in between. Our hotel this time had the oddly long title The York by Swiss-Belhotel International, this one chosen for its location all of three blocks or so from the Sydney Harbour Bridge, across which the World Pride March would be going the next day. (We only discovered later that we had to take transit to North Sydney and then march back, as opposed to the other direction, which I had thus far been assuming. This was still a much more convenient location than the previous weekend's hotel for this event, however.) The York is sort of backward from the floor numbering of both the Meriton Suites and the Crown Sydney: the York did not skip any floor numbers, and actually didn't even start floor 1 until one floor up from the ground floor, which we are not used to in the States; to us that is the 2nd floor, rendering the building 29 floors rather than the 28 shown on the elevator buttons.

This hotel booked us on floor 14, which to my way of thinking is actually floor 15—basically the same height as our fantastic hotel room in Adelaide had been, only with an even better city view, from a nearly as great open-air patio. That's just over halfway up the height of the building, and still gave us fantastic things to see from our very spacious room. Here we're eating pita bread made with a sort of kidney bean stir fry prepared by Shobhit in the room's kitchen (this was actually taken on Sunday at lunchtime).

Sunday, March 5 After the World Pride March on Sunday morning—which you'll read about in my next (and final, for this trip to Australia) email—we spent the afternoon exploring the city a bit more, including the famous Queen Victoria Building, or "QVB" for short, built in 1898, originally designed as a marketplace and currently a block-wide, high-end mall.

The QVB is beautiful both inside and out, and once we were inside, early evening on a Sunday, the building remained open but nearly all of the shops, at which we would not have likely done any shopping anyway, were closed. More than one giant clock hung like this from the ceiling, one of them with some oddly detailed dioramas on it.

Shobhit and I discovered the Queen Victoria Building to have five floors total, six if you count the basement level. Four of the floors stretch for most of its length, but as we explored the far ends of it, we found a winding staircase that led up to two more floors, these with rather limited floor space area, comparatively. I found a small window on the fifth floor, facing the green dome at the center of the building and across some of its rooftops—this now being a rather unusual view of the QVB. If you count that dome, it presumably adds at least another three floors to the building height, taking the total to eight.

From the QVB we walked the few blocks further down to Pitt Street Mall, which Shobhit had recently read is the fifth-most expensive mall in the world (its retail rents are the most expensive in Australia). There’s an open-air street mall stretch, which itself does not suggest the most expensive shops in the world, with the likes of Zara or Foot Locker as tenants. But, if you venture inside, you start to encounter far higher-end stores. There’s also a few restaurants, not all of these prohibitively expensive, and we decided to venture into one to share an appetizer.  We found a place called Babylon, which had a rooftop bar as one of its seating sections where we shared an order of spinach & feta gozleme that was quite delicious. We also had Sydney Tower, which stands just above this mall, towering right above us.  I took this shot to capture both the rooftop bar and the Sydney Tower reflection in another nearby high-rise.

Monday, March 6 Our final major attraction destination for this trip to both Sydney and Australia: the Sydney Opera House, which was a fairly short walk from the York Hotel. We had tickets already in hand, having purchased them on Saturday of the previous weekend. This was the view on the approach from behind, as opposed to the far more famous view from the waters of Sydney Harbour. On our one-hour guided tour, which I found to be absolutely worth every penny ($43 AUD worked out to about $29 USD per ticket), we learned that the Opera House has 10 “sails,” each designed as a slice of a sphere, but meant to evoke the sails of ships in the Harbour. Two of the “sails” are much smaller than the others, and they cover the high-end restaurant in the rear of the complex (which we did not eat at; our tour was at 11:30 a.m. and the restaurant was closed anyway), which is the side being looked at here.

The Opera House features six theatres, and two different stretches of the larger “sails” housing the two largest. The smaller of those, called the Joan Sutherland Theater, we were all led inside, and we got to see an empty stage and sit in some of its 1,500 very comfortable theater seats. We were even allowed to take photos in there. Not so with the much larger Symphony Concert Hall, where no video or photography was permitted. I have no idea if that rule is always in place, or just when a symphony rehearsal is underway, as was the case when we went in, being cautioned to be very quiet. It was very cool. Before we went into the Concert Hall, however, we did get to see its large and empty (except for our tour group) lobby, with its spectacular views of both the harbor and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, beyond its quite vivid “Royal Purple” carpeting.

After the Opera House tour, we had nothing planned for the rest of the day—or the rest of the vacation, really, as this was our last day in Australia, before our last night. We found a place near the Opera House to small glass rectangular block with 3D etchings of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge inside it. Then, with nothing better to do, we walked back over to Oxford Street where the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade had taken place, and on other days had been occupied by “Pride Villages.” This was our first time seeing it reopened to traffic, and we browsed a few of the shops, as this is Sydney’s gay neighborhood regardless of when Mardi Gras or Pride is happening. We walked back to the hotel again, arriving at about 3:30, and just killed time at the hotel for the next several hours. I did not want to waste our last evening in Australia having done nothing at all, though, so I suggested we go for one last walk just as the sun was setting. We went to a park maybe half a mile away, Barangaroo Reserve—the same park we walked through after our visit to the Sky Deck at Crown Sydney two Saturdays prior, on our way to buy the tour tickets at the Sydney Opera House. The sun had nearly set by the time we got there, at about 8:15, but I still got a few last, beautiful photos: one of the harbor toward the setting sun; a couple looking back at the Sydney Harbour Bridge, brilliantly illuminated under full moonlight.

(Click here for next travelogue: Sydney World Pride 2023)