Photos to follow later - access has not yet been properly sorted out!
With only a few hours left in Sydney, we decided to stay fairly near the hotel, so opted for a visit to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. We packed, checked out and put our luggage into storage for the day, then set off to catch the bus. While we were sitting waiting for the bus, Paul realised he no longer had his phone, so we had to run back to the hotel, get back into the room and search it carefully. It turned out the phone had slipped down between the bed and the bedside table, and being black on a very dark carpet, had not been noticed when I checked the room.
We gave up on the bus and walked to the Art Gallery, it was only about a 20 minute walk. We walked right across the central business district to St James Cathedral, then round to the Art Gallery.
There was a section on European art, and others on Australian Art. We looked at the European Art, which was somewhat sparse before Reubens. The only thing I really liked amongst the early things were a Reubens self-portrait. There was a beautiful Tissot
and a lovely Millais but the photos, without flash, can't do them justice.
I also noticed a beautiful Cezanne
and a couple of Vlaminks.
I also noticed a Van Gogh I didn't know.
There were statues too - a little Degas dancer, and this Rodin of the Burghers of Calais.
As time was getting on, we thought of going to look for lunch. But when we attempted to leave, we could see that the rain was lashing down outside, so we went back and lunched at the Museum cafe.
When the rain had stopped, we set off back to collect our luggage by a different route, and had time to admire the Sydney Hospital, celebrating its 200th year in McQuarry Street. That probably isn't the age of the building!
We had to be quick in our appreciation because the rain had started again.
We collected our luggage in very good time and waited for the airport shuttle. I had told Paul that a shuttle time around 2.30 would be ideal, and when he said he had booked the 3.10 one, I assumed he had discussed which one would be suitable with the shuttle operator. It turned out he had not, so we really didn't have enough time to get to the airport, especially since the shuttle was late.
I explained to the driver that we had a deadline to make, as the check-in would close at 3.55. The driver, not a native English speaker, seemed to understand, but went to the domestic terminals first, and then dropped us at the wrong end of the international terminal so we had to run dragging our heavy cases to the other end. The check-out had indeed closed, but fortunately we were told the flight was delayed, and somebody on another desk would kindly check us in.
This seemed to be complicated and took a little longer than normal, but by 4.15 we had boarding passes and instructions to be at the gate by 4.25, and that the gate would close at 4.55. So then we joined a big queue in Customs. When we finally got to a Customs Officer, we discovered we should have filled in an exit form, so we had to go back to the beginning and start again.
Once through Customs, we then had Security. I was delayed because I had forgotten my sun cream was in my hand baggage and that had to be thrown away, then my baggage had to be re-scanned.
I had originally intended to throw out my jar of Vegemite, but Paul had insisted on stuffing it into his hand baggage. Security confiscated that and threw it out, then Paul's baggage was re-scanned! So we were very late, and scampered past the shops to our gate, making it only a few minutes before 4.55, only to discover that the flight was delayed by at least an hour, and we needn't have bothered hurrying at all.
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