Sydney take two!!!!!

11.3.10

Well,

Tuesday morning came and after Kirsten and I collected our stuff, we checked out and headed to the airport for our 8:45am flight to Sydney. Once we arrived in Sydney, we found out that to get the free airport shuttle we were told about, we had to spend at least three nights in the hostel and we only were spending two. So, we got a taxi. When we got to the Westend Backpackers Hostel, we were expecting to see Jessica (Kirsten’s friend from Women’s College at UQ) and Evan (Jessica’s boyfriend), but they were not there due to their flight being delayed. They finally arrived about 40 minutes after Kirsten and I did. The four of us stayed in one of the four person rooms. This was super nice since we all were going to be hanging together and I trusted everyone in the room with my stuff, unlike in Melbourne. Luckily, we also had a private bathroom in the room. This hostel was soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much better than the hostel in Melbourne (and yes, the excessive amount of ‘o’s is necessary). The hostel was about 2 blocks away from the Travelodge that Erica and I stayed at 5 weeks ago.

The first thing we decided to do was walk over to the aquarium. The aquarium was at Darling harbor. The harbor is also home to the Maritime Museum, the Wildlife World, Captain Cook Cruises, some shops, and a bunch of boats. The Aquarium was fairly large, larger than I thought. The big theme was “Animals of the Future” and they had a booklet and displays of animals that could scientifically exist in 200 million years. Most of these ideas were extremely dumb. The present animals they had included a dugong, a couple manta rays, sharks, fish, octopi, cuttlefish, squids, more fish, and more sharks. The walk felt a little long and repetitive. They also had the world’s largest animatronics shark at 7.4 meters. The previous record holder was the 6 meter animatronics shark from Jaws. Once we got done at the aquarium we walked back to the hostel to drop stuff off before we met up with Sylvia. Sylvia is a friend of Kirsten’s grandparents and was given Kirsten’s number so they could meet when we got to Sydney. Sylvia invited all Jessica, Evan, and me to join them. We first drove to Bondi beach. The waves were huge. After taking some pictures and driving around some more, we went up to Gap Bluff and got amazing shots of both the ocean and the city. We then went to Doyle’s for a delicious dinner. I had Tasmanian Salmon. We also sat on the deck and saw the sun set behind the Sydney skyline. It was the best view I have seen of Sydney. After dinner we went to Badde Manores for dessert and coffee. Once we got done there, Sylvia dropped us off. The four of us played a couple games of cards and went to bed.

Wednesday came and we got up to go to the Taronga Zoo. Our ferry was leaving from Darling Harbour and on our way we went through the Queen Victoria Building (QVB). Last time I was here, the Queen Victoria statue and all the other statues were dressed up in ridiculous outfits and now they were all back to normal. Now, they had a ridiculously large lit Christmas tree in the middle of the QVB. We got to darling harbor and couth the ferry. We stopped at Circular Qauy and Fort Dennison before getting to the Zoo. At the zoo, we rode the gondola from the bottom to the top of the zoo and started to walk down. The zoo kind of felt like the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo since it was on somewhat of a hill. We walked through the Australian animal area, saw the sea lion show, visited the nocturnal animal house, and saw the big cats. It was really cool. Once we got done, we caught the ferry back to Circular Quay and walked to the opera house to take tourist pictures. From there we walked back to the hostel to again meet Sylvia.

This time we drove across the Harbour Bridge to the Kirribilli club for dinner. I had linguini seafood pasta that was also amazing. Then we drove to Manly beach and had dessert and coffee. After that we drove back to the hostel and crashed. Thursday, we fly back to Brisbane at 2pm.