Joe had to work. And he was in meetings last night, so I didn’t get to update the blog. But then I didn’t do much.<\/p>\n
We woke up yesterday to smoke. Lots of smoke. Looking out the window it was hazy with smoke. So we got up and got dressed and headed out. The hotel was silent and smoky. So started wondering if it was on fire and there just wasn’t a fire alarm, but nope, all good, as more people got on the lift. The street was even worse and it was hard to breathe.<\/p>\n
But still, out for breakfast, drop Joe off at the office, and I headed for Powerhouse, The Museum of Applied Art and Science as I thought it would be a good day to be inside. Was in the museum for about an hour and half when there was a loud klaxon and voice saying ’emergency, please exit the building’. I had worked my way back to the front door and sure enough staff were motioning for us to leave and gather in the forecourt. While outside I could hear other fire alarms going off as well.<\/p>\n
Several people decided to head for the cafe, which while it is off to the side is in the same building we had just evacuated! Not to mention if there had been a fire, that’s probably where it would have started. So they were shocked when they couldn’t go back in ‘just for a drink’. Then there were the people who weaved through all of us standing on the forecourt, past the man in the bright yellow vest saying ‘Fire Marshall’ and tried to get past the people in bright red vests with ‘Marshall’ on the back to get into the building where there was a klaxon blaring (it was very loud, uncomfortably loud). Some of them even argued about why they couldn’t go in! <\/p>\n
The fire engine pulled up quickly, three firefighters jumped out, and the engine carried on down the road – I assume to check the other alarms. Two firefighters headed for the cafe (of course), while the other headed into the main museum building. They gave the all-clear, in all I think we were outside for about half an hour, not long at all! It was probably the smoke setting off the alarm (and it had done in several other buildings I saw on the news later). So definitely a good day to stay inside.<\/p>\n
MAAS is well worth going to. The place is huge! When Joe left work I hadn’t finished a couple of exhibits and didn’t see a couple more. But met him outside and headed off for dinner.<\/p>\n
Today I saw the Opera House. I got up very early, just past 5, to get to the Opera House by 6:45. I was actually there much earlier, but better early than late! And the air was clear! No smoke and it lasted that way all day.<\/p>\n
I did the backstage tour, complete with yellow vest saying ‘Backstage’ and a pass. Got to see the Green Room and one of the major dressing rooms, as well as the backstage areas of the theatres. We managed to get into the Concert Hall before a school started their speech day. That was the only area that was closed off early, so the other tours didn’t get in. After the tour we got breakfast. So I didn’t see the stained glass window or foyer areas much. Still, definitely worth it and a lovely building and very enthusiastic guides.<\/p>\n
Did a little more walking around the Rocks and saw the Observatory. Getting ready to meet people for dinner!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe had to work. And he was in meetings last night, so I didn’t get to update the blog. But then I didn’t do much. We woke up yesterday to smoke. Lots of smoke. Looking out the window it was hazy with smoke. So we got up and got dressed and headed out. The hotel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[14,4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4T97-14K","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4208,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/05\/final-road-trip\/","url_meta":{"origin":4138,"position":0},"title":"Final Road Trip","date":"Sunday, 5 January 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday was driving, just driving pretty much! We woke up to a bit less smoke - not sure if it was the towel or the a\/c but slept better. Up and over cups of tea we worked out a safe route - we wanted to spend a couple of days\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4158,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/18\/road-trip\/","url_meta":{"origin":4138,"position":1},"title":"Road Trip","date":"Wednesday, 18 December 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Woke up in Sydney and started our road trip by going in the wrong direction. Google let us down. Once we found the correct place to rent our car from, we left the city heading for adventure, the Outback, and an Australian Road Trip! Reality set in as we worked\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4203,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/03\/beer-and-bandit-country\/","url_meta":{"origin":4138,"position":2},"title":"Beer and Bandit Country","date":"Friday, 3 January 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"We headed for Beechworth and the breweries. We had two on our list, Bridge Road Brewers and Billsons. The website was not completely clear about the tours, so we aimed to be at Bridge Road by 11am. We were in Beechworth early, through heavy smoke, and stopped at Tourist Information\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4122,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/06\/catch-up-post\/","url_meta":{"origin":4138,"position":3},"title":"Catch up post!","date":"Friday, 6 December 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Didn't get to update last night because Joe went out drinking. Until gone midnight. He claims it was work, but it was drinking. The last day of his conference was yesterday; today he was in the office. So yesterday we had breakfast and then I headed down to Circular Quay\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2645,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2016\/09\/14\/joes-reward\/","url_meta":{"origin":4138,"position":4},"title":"Joe’s Reward","date":"Wednesday, 14 September 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Today was museum day. Got up earlier and got out and on the way to Museuminsel. Once off the S-bahn Joe said we were early (we only had about 40 minutes to get there! But Joe said early!) so we stopped for coffee and bread. And then we could get\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4116,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/03\/another-day-in-sydney\/","url_meta":{"origin":4138,"position":5},"title":"Another day in Sydney","date":"Tuesday, 3 December 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Joe was at work. Well a meeting. All day. With dinner. I wasn't. I had breakfast with Joe then headed over to see where his meeting was. It's a nifty building, in Darling Square. Once I dropped him off I headed off into town. Got a call from a friend\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4138"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4138"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4143,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4138\/revisions\/4143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}