Inside a sticker-making booth at the aquarium. You can fly 8000 miles, but you can't escape Bill's evil screen of Death.
The plan for today was -- IMAX, museum, aquarium. First we walked to the IMAX to see what was playing. We decided to watch "Ghosts of the Abyss -- 3D" about the filming of the actual Titanic for the Titanic movie. It was playing at 4, 7, and 10. We wandered down the wharf to find lunch. It was 11:30. The first place said, "sorry, we're not open for lunch until 12. Arg! What was it with Australian restaurants only being open at very limited hours? The next place looked more open and they seated us, but when we tried to order we found that the kitchen didn't make lunch until 12. So I ordered breakfast, and when I was done, it was 12, so Jason ordered lunch. We hung out there for awhile just reading the Economist and the travel book. About 1PM we left and headed for the museum.
I was quite shocked at all the walking I had done, and I proceeded to walk back across town to the museum.
The museum had a skeleton room, a mineral room, a bird/insect room, and an evolution room. There we found an Earth Time Walk, starting at 4.5Ga and saying which type of life arose as we walked along. It was a cool idea but I don't think they implimented it well.
We headed back to catch the IMAX at 4. I was going to buy popcorn, but their concession stand wasn't open. I thought the movie was just okay. The main guy said "wow, this is so cool!" to be looking at the Titanic, over and over and over.
Next we went to the aquarium. Immediately upon entering there was a platypus display much better than the zoo. There were a couple walls full of information about them, and two platypus tanks. The platypus here seemed to be having just as much fun as the ones at the zoo.
There was a sea horse that looked almost exactly like the seaweed it lived in
There were fish from Antarctica that lived in water below freezing -- they had an antifreeze substance in their blood.
Next was the seal tank, which was a bit disappointing because there was only one seal, sleeping on a rock when we were there. What was cool was that they had two underwater tunnels where you could watch the seals swim around -- if there were any.
But we were quickly to find that there was a similar tank with underwater tunnels right next to it. This was the shark tank, and it was bustling with activity -- sharks, eels, fish, rays. This tank was really cool. We thought that was it. But the next was even better.
It was a coral reef display, and instead of just tunnels going under the tank, we had full surround action! We could look down and see the sand on the bottom of the tank. We could see the coral and fish all around us -- it was quite beautiful, and we didn't even have to get wet! That was the end.
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Large -- Medium Inside a sticker-making booth at the aquarium. You can fly 8000 miles, but you can't escape Bill's evil screen of Death. |
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We bought some stuff in the gift shop -- a baseball hat & a brimmed leather hat for me, a Dijeridoo CD for Jason, and some butterfly stickers for me.
We had also bought stuff at the museum bookshop -- a stuffed Platypus for Terra, a boomerang for Jason's dad. I guess I should have gotten my family stuff, but I didn't think of it soon enough. I also got a book called "Shoemaker: The Man Who Made an Impact" By Levy. It was there in the museum bookshop & I figured I should read it. After the aquarium, we crossed a bridge to the other side of the harbor. We got stuck in an indoor mall for awhile, but eventually we made our way to the harborside resaurants. After passing dozens of places, we found "Jordan's". It was pretty expensive, but it turned out to be a nice romantic dinner for the last night of our honeymoon.
For our first course, Jason ordered soup: Tomato, capsin (Australian for bell pepper), & fish; I ordered their specialty breat : olive sourdough. Second course -- Jason had a dozen oysters and I had their garden salad. Wow, what a salad! Usually salads have a quite bitter taste -- this one didn't. I don't know if it was the greens or the dressing ("oil with a mayonnaise base") but if salads always tasted like that I'd eat a lot more of them.
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We were both tired of walking, so we took the train -- there was a stop at the end of the harbor and one a few blocks from our hotel
Well, that's about it for our trip. We got up at 8AM (Sydney), got to the airport. The plane was delayed a bit. Once we got on it was forced movie-watching, computer game playing, and book-reading for 14 hours. I didn't sleep at all this flight; Jason got maybe an hour.
It took forever to get our luggage and through customs. We missed our connecting flight, but got on the next one.
While cooling our heels in LAX, we made some cell phone calls to family and
then went to
We're on the plane to Phoenix now. Unless something crazy happens before Tuscson, I'll wrap this up. Australia was great, but boy is it good to be home!
