The day I went to the Zoo and Trip to Watsons Bay
Sydney,
Australia
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Good evening to you all back home, its 9pm here and I was bored so I thought I would update you all on my adventures.
Well on Monday morning my room mates, Tom and Lewis, were leaving for Honolulu. It was an almost sad moment for these guys were the first people I'd gotten to know out here and we had a bit of fun....however emotion was swept to the side when I remembered that I was going to the ZOO, Taronga Zoo to be precise, the No.1 tourist attraction in Sydney (see the Harbour Bridge and Opera House are just there to draw the posh, fancy people in....but then the rest of us paupers realise there is a Zoo and all we want to do is see the pretty animals :) )
Now the brilliant thing about Taronaga Zoo is that to get there instead of a boring bus or train journey you actually get to take a ferry...and where does this ferry leave from I hear you ask?? Circular Quay which is right next to the Opera House and Harbour Bridge and you sail right past them so the picture I have, especially of the Opera House are really good. Anyway back to the animals, I arrived at the Zoo then and straight away its filled with children trying to drag there parents one way and the other, the boy wanting to check out the snakes whilst the girl wants to look at the Kangaroos, I really felt sorry for them and I peacefully looked at my map and in a fashion almost identical to my father I planned out a route around the Zoo to see all the animal...Oh dad you would have been proud!!!
The first thing I did was to have my photo taken with a Koala, and although you have to pay extra it is worth it to get up close with these guys, you don't realise that they are pretty big and there claws are huge. One thing I did learn when having my picture taken with the Koala....my beard is beginning to look rather scruffy, sort of between a weekend of not showering and tom hanks castaway is what it is like around now.
So I left these sleepy guys (if it wasn't an offence to touch Koala in NSW I would have hit 1 of em and said "oi you, I am paying so wake the f**k up") and I moved on to the reptiles. Now these guys were seriously cool looking, especially the Komodo Dragon, these guys are the biggest lizard you can find and he/she looked beautiful, just amazing and after leaving he/she I went into the Reptile Tunnel to check out some creepy crawlies, whilst I was in there taking a picture of this HUGE snake the thing I had been dreading happened...the low battery warning on my camera began to flash, and why here and now, when I needed you most, but fear not....with the mission impossible music playing in the background or my head in this case I whipped out the zoo map and frantically began searching for the gift shop...found it...approximately half a click south and I was away, 7 pounds later and I was the owner of a disposable camera and ready to rock and roll...again!!!
Right moving on from the reptiles and I was on to the giraffes, now the good thing about this picture was is that with these guys you can actually get a picture of them and the Harbour Bridge and Opera House all in one, how cool is that!!! Well I now moved on to the Wild Asia area, this is what I was looking forward to, because in the first enclosure, walking toward me as if from no where was this ma - hu - sive tiger. Tigers I have always loved, since watching wild cats on BBC2 as a child I thought them as legendary, absolutely great.....but of course these Chinese guys appear and start chatting away and I think to the Tiger "great, they think its dinner time ;)
I also found after consulting my map the red pandas, these cool critters, imagine if you will a dark ginger cat back home, kind of like my hair, now imagine the cat 3 times bigger and 100 softer looking and you get the red panda, I just hope my pictures actually come out, fingers crossed.
So after seeing these giant alley cats I moved on to the birds, now birds don't really impress me much unless they happen to be birds of prey, none of this I'm a colorful pigeon look and me!!! So I was in luck when I strolled past the soon to begin bird show, and I thought what the heck why not. Now this show only lasted 20 minutes or so but I was sitting right at the front and I loved it, I was the closest person in the audience to the peregrine falcon, the hawk and could even feel the air move and the Australian Eagle flew down just over my head.
The only thing I was slightly down about was that no one Kangaroo was standing up. Now we all have in our head the picture from Winnie the poo, of the Kangaroo standing up, but not one of them were.
I think I've told you enough about the Zoo for now and will wrap it up, I'm sure i'll mention it again sometime but I still have much more to say.
Tuesday today and I thought I'd keep my adventures going by taking a trip to Watson's Bay. Now its said to take a bus there however looking at the map I knew I could cover the distance, that it wasn't that far...boy how wrong I was going to be. I can tell you now that the map isn't to scale, it took me 2 hours to cover the distance a 20 minute bus journey does, but I'm glad because the views I got along the way I don't think any other tourist will have seen, plus some of the streets looked like they were right out of neighbors, almost like being there get in!!!!
Oh and on another note what I forgot to say about Sunday was that Tom, Lewis and I saw someone from Neighbors...Boyd I think he is called or at least thats what Tom said, so I saw my first celebrity.
Watson's Bay, I eventually saw the lighthouse indicating that after my walk I was somewhere close, I just had to keep going because at the end I knew would be 'world famous' fish and chips apparently? When I eventually made it I did think what was all the fuss about, cool its got a park and a fish and chip shop, but as you walk further into the area you see that the backdrop to this still and peaceful bay is that of the frantic and loud Sydney city, and as you sit there on the each of the pier you realise that these 2 sides of the bay are the exact opposite of each other, this is the Yin and Yang of Sydney.
Anyway after that sentimental moment I realise that I was famished and quickly set about finding the world famous Doyle's fish and chips...not hard as this is the only fish and chip organization here, they have something of a monopoly on the area!!! But the grub was never-the-less delicious, and I would recommend a trip here to try it, nothing at all like a local take away. After lunch I walked around the area and the detailed paths and found that one of the lead to a local nudist beach, one of very few in Sydney, however as I walked past on my way to other 'attractions' I realized that my hopes of seeing Jessica alba rising out of the water with the sun glancing off of those beautifully sculpted breasts was not to be so...why....everyone on this nudist beach was male = what patric lemagnen loves to see!!!
So I continued on and eventually got to what would have been a quality looking lighthouse...if there hadn't been a load of scaffolding around it at the time, so I was pretty bummed. I returned to the town and with my girlishly like calf muscles almost withered away by walking to Watson's bay, I opted for the bus home, taking a meager 15mins to do what I'd done in almost 2 hours.
Never-the-less I returned back to the hostel now accompanied by a large dominos pizza, which I bought with a coupon costing me only $6 = 3quid :) and I sign off now telling you that I am about to do something that only us English can do in that great, almost legendary sense....I'm gonna make myself a cuppa and read my book.
Thank you and Good Night
