Sydney CBD trip

Today P & I went into the city to see the First Emperor Exhibit at the Art Gallery. It was about the First Emperor of China & the entombed warriors that have been discovered around his tomb since the 1970's.

We caught the bus in to the city. For someone who grew up in the Hills District when public transport was not as widespread as it is now, this is fantastic! One bus, virtually across the road from my brothers house, all the way into the QVB. Granted it took 1.5 hours, the seat was a tad hard & it was bumpy at times, but not having to stress about city traffic is wonderful! When I was at uni, I gave up taking the bus to the station. There was only 1 or 2 in the morning & the same in the evening. The one time I caught the bus in the middle of the day it took so long to go home I decided it was better to stay at uni & study than do that again!

Coffee & a wander around the QVB was first on the agenda. HobbyCo is in the QVB, so P looked there while I checked out the pen shops hoping that there would be some kind of bargain (nope). I love the spiral staircase inside the QVB - I'm not sure how long ago the painting was done, but it seemed to make the staircase stand out more than normal. We caught the city shuttle bus around to St James station so I wouldn't have to walk as far. I lost my bearings a bit since it had been so long since I'd been to the Art Gallery (I worked out later it was 1994). Thank goodness for smartphones!!

The Art Gallery was quite crowded - it is obviously a popular exhibit!! We watched a video to start with - I'd recommend that if you do see the exhibit go into the theatre to see it first. It wasn't well sign posted & it wasn't until the lady checking tickets mentioned it that we doubled back to see it. It really put the whole thing in perspective & made it more interesting. There were lots of other artifacts as well as the warriors. They have found an incredible amount of stuff around the site of the tomb. The whole site is 56 square km. And they aren't even considering the actual tomb as a priority yet! There are thousands of these full sized terracotta warriors. Although their bodies are the same, depending on their rank of course, their faces are all different.  There are also horses & people other than warriors! Apparently each one would have taken approximately 150 days to make. I can't get my head around how many people there would have been to make just what they have found let along all that is still buried. And then, when the emperor died, they put all the people who worked on it all in a tomb & closed the door. How sad is that! The Emperor was trying to secure some peace in what he though the afterlife was I suppose.

We thought about walking through the Botanic Gardens to Circular Quay, but didn't think my foot would cope with that. So we walked back through the grounds of Sydney Hospital to Martin Place. We had lunch in Cafe Courtyard at the MLC centre - I knew the food was good from having dinner there before shows at the Theatre Royal. P had steak, I had spiced lamb backstraps with yoghurt & pomegranate - it was fantastic! Found out we could walk over to Pitt St via a walkway into the Glasshouse - I'll take any shortcut I can find at the minute with my foot the way it is!

Wandered around a bit more. P got ice cream, I got the best Portuguese tart I've had in a long time. Then we caught the bus back - certainly appreciated the air conditioning when we got out at the other end!


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