Day 2 of the not sure where we are going or what we are doing...

Hope you are all refreshed from Day 1's adventure, because I think that we may have a slightly busy day ahead of us :).

So to get off on the right foot, a visit to the Chinese Friendship Garden is warranted. Located at the end of Darling Harbour, walking along a water featured concourse, through a palm grove, past the Moscow Circus, we arrive at our destination. The Chinese Friendship Garden was established by the Chinese community to celebrate our Bicentenary in 1988.

A small oasis in the middle of a bustling city. The perfectly sculptured trees, imitating nature, a rushing waterfall, Chinese temples, Buddha sculptures, friendly dragons and quiet lotus filled water ponds brimming with giant Koi, provides tranquility and welcome relief in the sultry heat.

Following our sojourn around the garden it is time to make way to King Wharf, where lunch has been arranged and what better place, or way to do it, than cruising the Harbours on the catamaran the Majestic.

After being shown to the reserved place, the crew busily filling the buffet, the Majestic reverses easily out of her dock as we make our way out of Darling Harbour and to Port Jackson Harbour (or as more commonly referred Sydney Harbour).

Once underway, we are invited to help ourselves to the luscious cold and warm food from the buffet. The prawns are sweet and juicy, the salads plentiful as are the different varieties of vegetables and spicy noodles. Fish marinated in coconut sauce is divine and for the carnivores, juicy chicken pieces. Followed by mini deserts, fresh fruit and cheeses.

Stopping at Circular Quay for more passengers the catamaran makes it way around the Opera House and the small islands doting the harbour. Commentary being provided pointing out various places of interest and an overview of the Harbour from its establishment, during the wartime era and to recent port developments that have changed the docks to trendy (expensive) apartments and offices.

As the evening plan is for a Ghost Tour, the easiest method of transport to get there is via the Catamaran when it docks again at Circular Quay.

Now remember I warned you I don't regimentally plan my holidays... well this is one such time :). Getting off at Circular Quay, with time to fill in, makes it is the perfect opportunity to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art. An interesting option, there were pieces I really enjoyed and pieces... well you know the saying Art is in the eye of the beholder... just give me some paint and materials and I will see what I can come up with! But really I guess that is the beauty of art, it holds something different for all of us.

However, what I hadn't planned on, was a special exhibition of Annie Leibovitz works, "A photographers life, 1990-2005". It was fabulous, I have never been so awestruck. But it wasn't just her work of the rich and famous, or the power of politicians, but the essence she captures in photographs of her family and loved ones, from birth to death. (I think I'm babbling!)

Having a bit more spare time, I find the Argyle, it was suggested by a cousin as on the must do list. A hip-happening bar, just perfect for sitting in sunshine in the cobbled courtyard under the shade of a umbrella while drinking a refreshing lemonade (yes bubbles, but just of a different kind this time :)). But really as a shake was calling from down the road, it was time to get another quick bite to eat and another praline shake (just couldn't help myself).

Before long it is time to meet up at Cadman Cottage for the Ghost tour. As evening draws in, our black-caped, lantern holding tour guide meets us and provides each of us with some props for the tour, that we are to hang around our necks. Well at least with mine I get to hold a hand if I get too scared! And off we go, with two words, "follow me".

The evening is fun, exploring lane ways, through locked gates with tales of murder and self mutilations at the site where they occurred, with us having to part take in the tales as to what prop we had been given.

Ok, I will admit only now, I did have tingles up my arm and around my back (this was before we were told that tingles in females occurred in this particular place and one young girl in the tour had to leave the lane with her mother, visibly upset). This was in a certain lane, a hospital lane, where patients were kept in the laneway in the overcrowded conditions and the only anaesthetic to amputations was rum and yes there were plenty of deaths.

In the ruins of a cottage, that were discovered whilst a car park was being built under a building, after we descended into the warm, musty smelling, dark conditions, standing by the fireplace, I felt extremely uncomfortable (yes you guessed it, we were told people often felt uncomfortable in that spot) and what or who touched another one of the ladies on the back? Was it really a skull another one of the younger ladies saw while peering under the scaffolding stairs?

Whether it was overactive imaginations, from the atmosphere of the tour / or an actual presence or not the tour was super fun and interesting, going to places where I wouldn't have thought or found without a guide.

So that ending the day's adventure, I hope you manage to sleep well!