To finish off our week in Sydney we packed lots of stuff into our final two days, with museums, gardens and, of course, Taronga zoo. Lots to squeeze in but here what we covered in our final 4 hours in Sydney.
We started with a morning at The Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour, which was another attraction I had missed on first visit, mainly because I thought there was an admission charge but upon our investigations this turned out not to be the case, so we went for a nosy. It was quite interesting with lots of naval history as well as cultural and social history including tales from the Darwin Beer Can Regatta. The exhibition dedicated to the Northern Territory event certainly caught our eye as (with aid of a full sized example) they explain the rules of the regatta in which boats must be constructed entirely out of, as the name suggests, beer cans. Sounds very Australian to me.
It was very sunny when we headed over to Manly on the ferry on but thee trip over gave us a good view of the harbour and the bridge before dropping us off at Manly Wharf. Manly attracts all the surfer types but we were just here to do a bit of sightseeing and maybe a beach walk. The promenade was quite pretty which plenty of fish and chips and surfing shops and we headed on a nice wee wander down to Shelley Beach in the awesomely named Cabbage Tree Bay. I had some fun climbing a big tree before we headed back to the Wharf.
Since we had our 4 attraction pass cards we felt we should go visit the Manly Oceanworld Aquarium to see yet more fishes. Since we had lost all Andrew’s Sydney Aquarium photos I was on major fish photo attack and got a bit snap happy to try and make up for it. I think after a few minutes we were already fished out and even though I wanted to steal a cuttlefish as a pet there’s only so many tanks I can take so we head back to the city to try and watch the sunset from the Sydney Tower.
As it turned out, despite being really tall and visible from a fair chunk of the city, Sydney Tower is really difficult to find. After wandering round the streets for a fair while and getting a little annoyed at not being up the tower with sunset fast approached we finally realised the posh shopping centre we had been circling was actually the location of the tower entrance. We made our way up to the viewing deck having managed not to miss sunset and enjoyed the view before finishing the sight seeing for the day.
Another day, another ferry trip, this time back to Taronga Zoo. Once more I get my discounted tickets and we get another sunny day to go see some animals. We spend a good bit of the day at the zoo and it’s Andrew that gets very snap happy this time but by the end I feel hes had enough animal adventures for one day. I managed to get him to pet a kangaroo and talk to a rock wallaby so Aussie animals must be really exciting for Andrew to be interested. After our day at the zoo we head back to the city once again and hang around the Opera House. Sadly there was building or construction work of some kind around the Opera House which ruined the pictures a bit so we spent some time in the Botanical Gardens before heading back to our hostel home before our planned trip to The Blue Mountains.
