weekend walks: the rocks
Just in time for St Patrick’s Day we visited St Patrick’s Church in Sydney City, for the first time ever, the traditional heartland of Sydney’s Irish working class Catholics.
Well, we didn’t only visit St Patrick’s, we spent 2 hours walking approximately 7km around Circular Quay and The Rocks. The City of Sydney have very useful Historical Walking Tour brochures which we used this week while playing tourists in our home city. We chose to do the COLONY walk. And we saw things that we had walked past a thousand times in our lifetime but never really stopped to learn about it or even really “look” at it.
We are a day early but Happy St Patrick’s Day 🙂
Have a great week ahead.
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weekly photo challenge: inside
For the weekly photo challenge, we are “inside” Hagia Sophia in Turkey! This tremendous ancient wonder steeped with history will have you in awe.
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himeji castle: one of japan’s oldest castles
Reading just the other day about Cherry Blossom season made us think of our time in Japan. Flicking through our photos we came across photos of Himeji Castle.
Himeji Castle survived World War II bombings and earthquakes and is an example of Japanese castle architecture dating back to the 17th century. However, the history of the castle spans back to the 1300s, where it started as a fort and then a castle before becoming the castle that we see today. It is one of 12 oldest castles still standing out of about 25 000 (yes, 25 thousand) castles ever built in Japanese history. It is 6 levels high with very steep stairwells and with each floor, the stairwell get narrower and steeper.
We had to take our shoes off so were climbing the stairs light-footedly like ninjas. The depth of each step, the higher we got, was so narrow, we were only able to place half our foot on. Basically we were tippy-toeing to the top, making us feel even more ninja-like 🙂 And the view when we got to the top was worth the sore calf muscles! It really was quite a fortress!
The castle sits atop a hill and looks so wondrous and white and is referred to sometimes as the White Heron Castle. The day we were there, the sky was so blue – it was simply picture perfect.
Himeji Castle was listed as a UNESCO Heritage site in 1993.
To see the other UNESCO sites we have visited, visit our unofficial bucket list
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weekend walks: hermitage foreshore walk
As we had visited north, south and west on previous weeks, we were due to visit the east! It was over to Rose Bay which is about 7 km from Sydney.
Thankfully, the weather was much better than it was last week. The sun was out and skies were blue. The views of the harbour were sensational. The Hermitage Foreshore Walk was approximately 1.8 km but it wasn’t flat. We had anticipated the walk to be on boardwalk, but once again were surprised as it was sandy tracks, rock steps or gnarled tree roots.
We stopped occasionally to watch people out on the harbour: paddle boarding, water-skiing and kayaking. Luckily, the walk was uneventful, no snakes or sudden weather changes (although we did see a spider reel in lunch just above our heads – see the last photo). It was just a pleasant foreshore walk. There were little secluded beaches along the way and we also saw Strickland House (c. 1856) which was once a hospital.
After leaving Nielsen Park, the rest of our walk was through residential streets so our photos this week were mainly from the first part of our walk.
wise monkeys abroad 