Two Icons

 Its always funny to see world famous icons for real. You see them so often on pictures, calendars, etc that you feel that you know them well. The element of surprise is lacking. Some of them are much more impressive than you had imagined, like Macchu Picchu. Others are a bit of a disappointment somehow, like the pyramids for me. Here in Sydney there are two icons, the bridge and the opera house, and there was one type each.
The disappointment was the bridge. Well, disppointment is not actually the word, its just that there are better metal bridges. When I first visited Montreal I fell in love with the Montreal Harbour Bridge, known locally as Pont Jacques Cartier. Now I have seen Sydney's I know fully how good Montreal's is. Montreal should really start to market this bridge. If Sydney can use its bridge as a tourist draw so can Montreal. The tourist information should start to use its original name of Montreal Harbour Bridge in its publicity (keep the name of Pont Jacques Cartier in Quebec, there would be a revolution if they chose Montreal Harbour Bridge as its official name) that it sends worldwide. They should outline it with lights and give it a clean but most of all they should use it as a fireworks platform like Sydney does. The crowds loved the fireworks on the bridge. Montreal already has it fantastic firework competition every summer and they could add to the pull by using the bridge as a launch on June 24th or July 1st. The Montreal Harbour Bridge is easily a rival to the world famous Sydney Harbour Bridge and Montreal should start to use it.
The triumph is the Opera House. Its so much more outstanding than you imagine. From every angle it is gorgeous and the closer you get to it the better it gets. Its only as you get up to it that you realise how big it is, its absolutely masssive. It took ten years to build and most of that time was spent in overcoming the engineering problams involved. I'm not surprised, the roof leans over at an acute angle. Its a credit to Sydney and Australia that they were ready to invest so much time and effort and use such a prominent position to build something as arty as an opera/classical music venue. I still recall the howls of protest when the government gave money to the Royal Opera in London.