Sydney, Australia

Blazo has a Montenegrin friend here who very kindly offered to tour us around the entire day.

*	Sydney harbor from the deck of the Queen Mary 2. We got an exuberant welcome from the boat owners in Sydney, just as we did in Auckland and San Francisco.
*	Left to right, Ljubica Mandic, Blazo, the Mandic daughter (she just graduated from university with a major in film), and Misko Mandic, who was our host and guide. They emigrated from Bosnia when the war in Yugoslavia broke out in 1991. They tried Serbia and Italy before finally settling in Sydney.
*	Everything is wonderfully clean in Sydney. Sylvester Stallone came the day before we did. His bodyguards were throwing away steroids, thinking they might be illegal, and wound up getting ticketed for littering.
*	The Opera House, one of the iconic landmarks. We had lunch on the waterfront with Ljubica, Misko, and two men whose names I didn't get.
*	The Harbor Bridge is the other iconic landmark. The sandstone towers at either end have no structural purpose. They were added after the fact to reassure people that something was holding up the bridge.
*	A rocky promontory at Gap Park.
	Misko says that Bondi Beach is 2nd in fame only to Copacabana Beach in Rio. There are many sand beaches and only one or two sharks.
*	The Olympics were in Sydney in 2000 if I remember correctly. The facilities continue to be used by the residents. This is the Aquatic Center, where there are swimming classes for children, a water slide, and many lanes for swimmers. Not to mention the water polo pool where Australia hosted Montenegro.
	Blazo with some of the members of the Montenegrin water polo team. The Montenegrins were so pleased to have an international match that they didn't mind losing. And they were not badly defeated. Next stop: Hong Kong.

*Hover over pictures marked with an asterisk to enlarge them.