I met up with my friend Angus on Saturday afternoon, he got me onto a boat cruise through the Sydney Harbor.

It had been raining all morning and it didn’t look like it would get much better, but it was a fun cruise. Together with a bunch of his friends we circled the harbor, crossed under the Harbor bridge, past the Opera house and along the different coves and beaches that make up the Sydney Harbor, or Port Jackson, as it is also called.

It’s a bay and the mouth of the Parramatta River. The famous Botany Bay, that James Cook sailed into in 1770, is actually south of Sydney.

The harbor is Sydney’s biggest asset. The views are fabulous. On the Sydney skyline, the CBD, the Opera and the bridge, but also on a number of little islands, coves and numerous multi-million dollar houses.

Most of them pretty much normal houses, just built on prime real estate and with amazing windows. Who wouldn’t want to wake up with such a view?

Housing prices are sky high all around the harbor, in most areas the average house price is way above a million dollars. If your family owns one, you probably never let go of it.

We were a fun bunch – some of them I knew from the now legendary New Year’s Eve Party! Small world, again. I also got a number of tips for my trips around New Zealand and Japan.

We anchored in Rose Bay for a while and we even got to jump in and swim in the clean, not too cold, green water. After that, and along a couple of beers, we had a BBQ on the boat, and then slowly went back to Woolloomoolo Bay (I did not make that name up…)

And even though the sun was not out one single time, and thick clouds had covered the sky, and we went through the occasional drizzle, I managed to get quite a sunburn. I even had applied a 15 sunscreen… but down here, that just won’t protect you, and no cloud cover will.

We ended it in The Tilbury Hotel, for a final beer, in the rain…