Matt and I took the red eye flight to Sydney from Darwin. We arrived here at 6:30am. We caught a train ($30) to get to central station. We then had to walk 1 block to our hotel. Yes HOTEL not hostel. Matt thought we were staying in hostels for the entire trip. This was my birthday present to him. We are in the 4 star Marque Hotel. It is beautiful. We dropped off our luggage because our room would not be ready until 2 pm. We then set out for our fist day in Sydney!
Our first destination was the Toronga Zoo! We walked to Darling Harbor and then caught a cruise over to the Zoo.
Darling Harbor is where there is a lot of fine dining, the aquarium, the Maritime Museum, and gorgeous fountains and sculptures. Here is the view from Darling Harbor.
On our way over to the zoo we passed under the Harbor Bridge. When Matt and I were looking for things to do in Sydney we found that you could pay to walk up to the top of the bridge. It was very expensive and you were not allowed to bring a camera. You had to pay $35 for a picture. So we decided to save our $$ instead. Here is the bridge and here is a close up of the people who have to wear grey suits and are harnessed into the bridge so they can' fall off.
Here is a pic of the Opera House from the cruise.
It was $100 for cruise and zoo tickets. We arrived at the Zoo around 10:00am along with 10,000 other people. I’m serious. There were actually 10,000 people at the zoo. Turns out the state of New South Wales (where Sydney is located) has all of their schools on break. There were so many kids!!!
The Zoo is locate crossed the harbor and is on a giant hill. When you get to the top, there is a breath taking view of the Sydney skyline including the opera house and the harbor bridge. We did enjoy seeing many of the animals. We made it a point to see all of the Australian animals for Matt.
We became hungry for lunch and walked to the food courts. What a total chaotic mess!!!! 10,000 people all wanted to eat lunch at the same time! Matt and I tried to look for other food places but they only had ice cream carts. Which was fine, but we wanted real food. So on our walk back we spotted 2 giant turtles. One climbed on top of the other and started grunting very loudly. It was very funny to watch all of the kids asking questions and the parents returning answers such as; “they are leapfroggin” or “He wanted a piggy-back ride.” The kids excepted piggy back ride and then started chanting it! Matt and I almost fell over because we were laughing so hard.
We made it back to the food courts and stood in line for 30 minutes or so. We each got a $9 scoop of ravioli. We decided to pass on the $3 (each) breadsticks.
As we finished walking around the zoo there was an enclosure of chickens, roosters, and deer. In this enclosure was a giant tree where a leopard was laying. Matt turns and says “Kaylin, look at the kitty!” I turn to him and reply “Matt, the kitty isn’t real” It was a fake leopard that was very shiny and smiling. We had a good laugh at that.
On our way out we had to exit through the gift shop. I wanted something that said Toronga Zoo on it. I found a coffee mug for $20 and key chains for $12 and decided that we had enough pictures as souvenirs. We had already blown through $120 that day.
Caught the cruise ferry ride back to Darling Harbor and went the Sydney Aquarium! $57 for the 2 of us to get in. It was pretty cool, but again full of kids and groups. The coolest thing about the aquarium is that it floats! It is on the end of harbor is supported by pylons. The aquarium had a Where’s Wally theme. We know this as Where’s Waldo. So in most exhibits they would have a picture out of one of the books as the background with lots of cartoon characters drawn all over it and then Wally, the Wizard, the bad guy, Woof (Wally’s dog) would be hidden in the water amongst the fish. It was pretty cool.
After the aquarium we had had enough walking for the day and headed home. Because it was Thursday it was late night shopping. All of the stores were open until 9:00pm. The walk back was very crowded on the streets and then it started raining. So everyone moved under the awnings along the sidewalks and it became even more crowded.
Matt and I stopped in at a Turkish Kababs place and got lamb kababs. These are pretty much wraps. Lamb, tomato, lettuce, onion, cheese, and garlic sauce. We walked back to our hotel, settled into our room, ate the kababs, and headed to the roof for the pool and spa! Because the pool is on the roof and it rained a lot, the water was very cold. So we went back to our room and took very long showers. The last time we had had a shower was the night before we swam with the crocs. We had to check out, swim with the crocs, and could not have a shower until Sydney. Got to Sydney and or room wasn't ready until 2 pm. So we walked all over the Zoo and Aquarium. We then went straight to bed. We only got about 3-4 hours of sleep on the plane and then hit the ground running all day long.
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