Hi - we'll be in Australia next march and want to see the opera House. Thinking about the "Front of the HOuse" tour. We'll have our mother who will be 86. She gets around well but we're concerned with the "200 steps" - does this mean steep stairs? Just walking? Or what? Maybe we should skip the tour? Any help will be appreciated!

Hi, Carol!<BR>It's years since I did this tour, but I can't recall the two hundred steps... I think most of those must be the ones you walk up to get into the front of the building (not very daunting, and there are inside and outside ones)! If I were you, I wouldn't cancel the tour, but if when your Mum gets there she finds the climb a bit daunting, find an official and ask for an alternative for her. The Opera House has to get scenery, costumes, occasionally even large animals, up onto the stage and down again, so I can't imagine there wouldn't be numerous "non-public" elevators which they could use in the case of an 86-year-old tourist who was doing them the honour of visiting their building. And it is an honour that she's doing them... think of it that way and watch them all run around to help.<BR>P.S. I wouldn't recommend the Bridge Climb for Mum, however!

We went to the Opera House and took a tour in February, 2002. It was FABULOUS. There were stairs though -- outside of the building and inside within each of the theatres and getting to those theatres. I would try to contact the Opera House in some way to see if there is some help available to a handicapped person. I know it would be hard to leave mother and take the tour, but the tour is really quite interesting....

I remember a lot of stairs. You can enquire, but don't feel too bad about just walking around outside. The inside was not done according to the famous architects plan and doesn't have nearly the feel of greatness you get from the exterior. I heard they recently asked the architect to return to redo the interior, but as far as I know he still refuses to ever visit the building after the gov't meddled with his plans (and destroyed his blueprints for the interior).

I found the website for the Opera House which I didn't have time to explore, but probably you could get some contact details from this, and contact them to discuss.<BR><BR>It will be very interesting, but don't expect the interior to be as fantastic as the exterior, for reasons given by previous poster.<BR><BR>Go to,........<BR><BR>http://www.soh.nsw.gov.au/