Nicola and I with the Opera House in the background
Opera House with the Sydney Harbour Bridge
Great view of the city from the Zoo
Baby Koala, called a Joey, at the Zoo
Baby Gorilla hanging on for dear life at feeding time
Starin' right at you
Californian Seal doing a double backflip - very impressive
Okay obviously we had to put a Kangaroo on here
How Rude!Well Sydney is sure a change of scenery for all of us here. A city of over 4 million people which is absolutely massive. To think of even covering off a fraction of what there is to see and do in Sydney in 4 days is ridiculous. However, we've been spending our time here pounding the pavement of the downtown streets walking everywhere we possibly could. Our hostel is a short 30 minute walk to the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge as well as most of the downtown core. On our first day here the weather was great, the sun was shining and it was nice and warm so we took in the Sunday Market in the "Rocks" district and walked around to see what Sydney was all about. Since then the weather has been going downhill everyday, it has been cloudy and raining on and off for the rest of the time here. Despite the weather we spent an entire day at the Tangora Zoo across the Sydney Harbour and have still managed to spend a lot of time outside.
The Zoo was great, it gave us a chance to actually see some Kangaroos and Koalas, which we obviously couldn't have come to Australia without seeing. They actually had an incredible range of animals, birds, and reptiles at the zoo. At 10 mintues to close we were literally running to see the last of the exhibits that we had missed, Tangora is huge! The Koalas were clearly a favorite with the ladies, while I especially enjoyed the giant turtle and the Komodo dragon.
Besides the zoo we've had a lot of time walking around Sydney seeing the great parks, shops, and buildings. I must say that I've really enjoyed Sydney and I'm pretty impressed with the city. There are really nice public parks where you can get excellent views of the harbour, and the city itself is very clean and feels very safe. The shopping downtown is insane. There are unlimited stores of any kind that you could imagine. Today I got lost in an 8 storey department store looking for a birthday gift for Nicola. It is very easy to wind up in an underground shopping mall and pop up to street level blocks away without the slightest clue where you are. Similar to Auckland in New Zealand it seems like the downtown core is more highly occupied with retail and business space as apposed to actual living space like all the condos in cities like Vancouver.
From here we are flying to Hobart in Tasmania tommorow morning. There is no Greyhound bus service in Tasmania and the guided tours are very expensive so we've opted to rent a car and split the costs. It only takes three days to drive a loop around Tasmania and we have 4 full days and 2 half days so we should be able to take in the major sights. It will probably take the collective effort of all three of us to make sure I'm driving of the 'left' side of the road at all times, I'm sure we'll be alright though. After that we will fly back to Sydney where we will say goodbye to Jen and we will take off to Thailand.
