I didn't actually photograph any of the Picasso pieces because I wasn't sure that I was allowed, but on the way to and from the Art Gallery I took a few pictures of points of interest in the city of Sydney. Here is a view from Hyde Park of the grand Catholic cathedral in downtown Sydney:
To get to the Art Gallery I walked along Art Gallery Road, which was quite beautiful:
And then on the way home I crossed the bridge over Darling Harbour and took a few pictures of the boats:
But wait, there's more! My old friend Ben is visiting Australia for a few weeks, and last weekend he and I went on a road trip from Sydney to Melbourne. Here he is enjoying an Australian coffee, which is the best in the world:
Before we went to Melbourne, we took a trip out to a local zoo and hung out with some Ozzie wildlife:
The drive from Sydney to Melbourne is very very long, so to break it up a bit we stopped from time to time in little towns in the middle of nowhere, including Holbrook, a town hundreds of kilometers from the coast that randomly acquired a submarine decades ago to attract tourists. Ben took my picture on it.
And finally to Melbourne, where I had some terrific Eggs Benedict on DeGraves Street:
Melbourne has a lot of inviting little alleys with shops and cafes:
Because Ben has developed a severe allergy to gluten, we hopped on a tram to a place that serves gluten-free fish and chips:
At dusk we drove out to the Phillip Island nature park where every night at dusk the local penguin population can be seen parading home from the ocean to their burrows. They were very very cute, but it was kind of hard to see them properly because the nature park was so crowded with people staring at the penguins. Also, we weren't allowed to take pictures of the penguins because it can blind them if you use a flash, so instead of the penguin parade I took a few pictures of the people parade from the parking lot to the penguin habitat:
Ben flew from Melbourne to Cairns and will come back to Sydney in a little while after exploring there and in Brisbane.
But that didn't keep old Throckmorton and Rachael from having yet another adventure this weekend! Variety's 1955 prediction that rock and roll would be gone by June is still false, thanks in part to Rachael's rock star brother Jonathon, who had a gig in the town of Katoomba up in the Blue Mountains on Friday that Rachael and I drove out to see. Here's the website of Jon's band, which you can check out at your leisure:
http://thisismusic.com.au/about.php
I also took a video of their performance that should give you an idea of how great they are:
Jon is the one singing on the left, Kis (pronounced "Keesh") is the guitarist on the right, and behind them both is Pete on the drums (he's a bit harder to see).
Last but certainly not least, the next day on our way home from the mountains, Rachael and I stopped at a stunningly beautiful botanic gardens for tea and botany:
All the best,
Throckmorton.
