Sydney's amazing opera house

Just when I thought I had Australia all figured out, we took a tour of the Sydney Opera House and saw this.

It may be the only place in the whole country where men are actually directed away from the bar.

But then, perhaps that's what happens when Australian men attend the opera?

Seriously, I love the Sydney Opera House.  When construction started, the engineers had not actually figured out whether the building could be built as designed.

And when finally completed, the price was 1400 per cent of budget.  That's right.  It wasn't just twenty or thirty per cent over budget.  It cost 14 times more to build it than was originally estimated.

And yet it is one of the world's few truly iconic buildings.  Up close, it is simply breathtaking.  Audacious and yet utterly graceful.  As startlingly modern today as it was when construction finished almost forty years ago.  When its soaring, ambitious, and yet completely simple lines literally reshaped  our conception of an entire country.  And its price is just a footnote.

Sometimes boldness wins.