We arrived in Sydney at 6AM. Jade Bond, my officemate at LPL, is from Sydney, and her mom met us at the airport. We hadn't reserved a motel room yet, and Mrs. Bond let me use her cell phone. I found us a place for $100/night and when we got our luggage she drove us there and we checked in. Then she drove us down to Circular Quay, where the Opera House, Bridge, and ferries are. We ate breakfast/lunch there, having eggs, hashbrowns, bacon, toast, and OJ. NExt we went and bought tickets for the ferry ride to the zoo, and for the zoo. Then Mrs. Bond left.
I should mention here that it was cold and windy in Sydney -- 7oC! It warmed up a bit over the course of the day.
On the ferry ride to the Taronga Zoo, we got great views of the Opera House & bridge. Unfortunately, we left the camera back in the hotel. The zoo was primarily so we could see the only two montreme mammals -- the platypus and the echidna. They had both. The echidna we saw was hanging out near the outside concrete wall of his pen -- probably tring to soak up some heat. The platypus had aquariums and we could see them flitting about. They were very cute and looked like they were having a grand time. Eventually we wandered back to the ferry -- just in time to see it pulling out of the station! We waited 1/2 hour for the next one to come by.
Our next destination was the Sydney Observatory -- now little more than a museum. It contained some old telescopes and artifacts used for observing the Venus transit.
We set out for the Sydney tower, the tallest building in the Southern hemisphere, or so it was claimed. We forked over the $$ to take the elevator to the top. We got there just at sunset and watched darkness settle over the city as all the lights came on.
Downstairs, we had asked for supper, and again we were turned away, saying their kitchen was not yet open for dinner. We tried another place, which was open. I had an openfaced bacon, cheese and avocado sandwich -- yummy! -- and a salad.
We had made two other stops -- one at a bookstore where we looked at travel guides for exotic locales such as AZ & CA. I was disspointed that the Coastal CA book madeno mention whatsoever of Oxnard. We bought the AZ book so as to be sure of hitting all the local destinations while we live there.
The second stop was to buy an opal for Jason's mom. We saw many opal shops along our walk, but most didn't display prices, and we thought that was a bad sign. When we found a place with prices, we went in, and were pleased that we weren't accosted by the salespeople -- although this may have been because they didn't think we'd really buy! But we did. They were very nice, and bagged everything for us -- "duty free" whatever that means. Tax free since we weren't going to stay long in Australia.
Back to the tower -- when we were ready to leave, we decided to take the monorail. The monorail just goes in a loop around Darling Harbor, counterclockwise. We needed to go two stops -- clockwise. So we got to ride the long way just for fun.