Days #31 and #32: Going Under

Journals #31 and #32
4/1/16-4/2/16
Killer Animals Spotted: 2 (1 Croc, 1 Cassowary)

So I finally made it to Australia! After a brief cluster at the Airport (something happened to our original plane, so passengers were then split up onto 3 different smaller planes…evidently that was easier than finding a new plane), I made it to Sydney!

Thankfully, Australian customs is super easy if you’re American: the entire thing is done on a computer and takes roughly 10 minutes. I had cleaned and polished my hiking boots in anticipation for the token agriculture sweep (this was a big thing in New Zealand), but evidently they are significantly less concerned about foreign soil in Australia (I gather than unlike in New Zealand where the Apex predator is a House Cat, animals here are much tougher).

Once I arrived I headed to my Airbnb- I’m staying on the top floor of a building in Darlinghurst, which is a small suburb next to Hyde Park (roughly 20-25 minutes walk from the Sydney harbor). The apartment I’m staying has an awesome view- I’ll see if I can get a great picture of it for the blog!

This morning I then got up at Sunrise to shoot photos at the Sydney Opera House (today’s photo)- I always love shooting photos at sunrise because there are no people around. I came back to this same location about 2 hours later and there were over 200 people there!

After that- I went on a full bore into tourist activities- in order I did the Sydney Sea Life Aquarium, the Wild Life Sydney Zoo, and the Sydney Tower “Eye.”

The Aquarium

I love aquariums but this particular aquarium is fairly tiny- they make good use of the space by having it go several stories underground, but there’s just not much there. If you do the aquarium, buy the multi-attraction package so you can go to any of the other “life” attractions afterwards (it only takes about 30-40 minutes to go from end to end at the aquarium). They do however have awesome underwater tunnels- here’s one I took under the shark tank:

Aquarium

Wild Life Sydney Zoo

This place is pretty cool- located right next to the aquarium you can see pretty much every major animal unique to Australia: Kangaroos, Koalas, Wombats, HUGE crocodiles, and Tasmanian Devils (sadly no ‘Drop Bears’). Of those 5- the only one I am unlikely to see in the wild on this trip is the Koala, so here’s a photo of a Koala chillin and eating some Eucalyptus leaves:

KoalaBear

Sydney Tower ‘Eye’

Similar to the Auckland Skytower, this is a tall Space-needle-esque structure in downtown Sydney. The weird thing about it is that it’s not standalone- in fact the first 7 stories are built on top of a huge shopping mall (this is a bit confusing because you have to cut through the mall to get up to the tower). Once there the experience is largely the same: you take an elevator up to the top and are treated to awesome 360-degree views of Sydney. The whole thing takes about 20 minutes but it’s a fun way to see just how massive Sydney is- there’s about 4.5 million people living here and the city just goes for miles and miles. Here’s one photo I took up there:

SydneyTower_Compressed