A day in the city

Of course, no visit to Sydney is complete without a day in the city.  We decided to catch the bus into the city rather than the train so that we could go a different route.

After a wander around the city for a while we took the train down to Circular Quay and decided to take the river boat up the Parramatta River.

RiverCat

This gave us great views again of the Sydney Opera House and also the Harbour Bridge - age old shots of Sydney.  It was a really windy day, although quite warm, and the water had lots of white caps and was very choppy.  I don't have great sea legs but I was surprised to find how stable the ride on the river cat was.  We initially stopped off at Lunar Park and then headed up the harbour to the Darling Harbour stop.  From here we headed up the river.

We took the RiverCat has lots of stops on the journey up the river and we took it until the last stop, where the boat turns around, at Rydalmere.  We had asked whether it was possible to walk to a train station from there to return to Blacktown, and had been told it is about a seven minute walk.  Sounded great, so that is what we did.  I don't know who timed the seven minute walk - the ferry wharf is situated in mainly an industrial area that was serviced by an hourly bus.  We saw that pass as we walked along the jetty.  So we followed the bus route from bus stop to bus stop and kept walking, and walking, and walking.  Remember it was warm and very windy and not very pleasant even though we asked one guy, he wasn't certain where to go.  Eventually we decided to head off the bus route to a main road in the distance, and surprise, surprise located a train station.  Fortunately the station was manned, and we were able to ask for assistance.  So we soon learned we had to catch one train, then change at another station and get on another to go to Blacktown.  Not quite what we expected, but we had enjoyed our day out exploring and who could complain - for $2.50 each we had again experienced public transport in Sydney and eventually got to where we wanted to go.  Not bad for us - bus, train, rivercat, train, train and then bus.  Don't anyone try to tell us that we don't take public transport.  The trip on the RiverCat was lovely and we can highly recommend - perhaps just take it up and down the river.