Day 5: At the Zoo
Well, in case you haven’t caught the clue yet, I spent Friday mostly at the zoo. I slept in a bit in the morning, got up and had a nice breakfast at the little café down the street, and then walked across to the ferry building. I bought a “day-tripper” ticket, which entitles you to use any and all Sydney public transportation for the entire day, which means ferries, buses, trains, etc. It’s a great money-saver if you know you’re going to be taking the ferry more than twice. My timing was pretty good, and the ferry for Circular Quay left about five minutes after I bought my ticket. We had the by-now familiar ride over to Sydney Harbor, and I have to say that even after you’ve seen it every day for a week, the views of the harbor as you come in are just magnificent. The Opera House and the Sydney Harbor Bridge really do look just like a picture postcard (only in person!). Again, the timing was good, and I walked right off the Sydney-Manley ferry and onto the Zoo ferry. That’s about a 15-minute ride to the wharf below the zoo, and I do mean below. We docked at about 10:00.
Once you land below the zoo, you have the option of a bus ride up to the lower entrance or a sky lift up to the upper entrance of the zoo complex. Needless to say, I hopped on the sky lift, opting to spend the rest of the day walking *downhill*. The sky lift offered, once again, some lovely views of Sydney, this time from a different direction than that from which I’ve seen the harbor before. Later in the day, I took some pictures from a viewing platform lower down in the zoo. The zoo feels enormous, although I don’t know how much land it really covers. It has all the usual “exhibits” you’d expect to find, plus several that are Australia-specific. For instance, the first thing you see when you get off the sky lift is a “Koala Encounters” compound where you can see and take pictures of Koala bears. For a totally outrageous sum of money, you can have your picture taken having a “Koala encounter”. I opted not to pay the money, especially after watching a couple pay their money and then not be allowed to touch or do anything that would get the Koala to look up so it could be included in the picture. They did get a very close up view of it, but hey, what’s a telephoto lens for anyway? I did take quite a few pictures of the Koala’s, both at the Koala encounter and at other spots in the zoo.
I spent just about the entire day wandering the zoo grounds, and I took so many pictures, I filled the memory card of my camera! I wish the Kodiak bears had condescended to stand up at least once so I could get a good picture of them. As the largest bears in the world, that would have been impressive. They were far more interested in napping in the sun, however, than in obliging an American tourist wanting their picture. The tigers, on the other hand, were happy to pace, snarl, roar, and look at the camera. You are separated from them by a wall of unbreakable glass, so I had a bit of trouble getting good pictures not ruined by the flash, but I managed to get a few. The chimps and gorillas were, as always, fascinating to watch – way too much like us not to become enthralled at their enclosures. Don’t know how many miles I must have walked, but I was very glad to have brought my cane along (and very glad to have brought sun-block and a hat too!).
At length, I’d seen everything there was to see or decided I just didn’t have the energy to walk over to anything else, so I went back down to the ferry landing to catch the ferry to Circular Quay. Again, my timing was good, and we took off not five minutes after I boarded. By the time we got to the Quay, I decided my feet hurt, I was hungry, I was thirsty, and I wanted to sit down. Lo and behold, what’s the nearest place for that? Why, the Opera House Oyster Bar, of course! Several glasses of champagne, a dozen oysters and some Turkish garlic bread later, I was feeling much more the thing. It’s really beautiful sitting right on the water, and it was a very sunny but temperate day, so I sat there with a book for almost two hours as I ate and drank. Finally, my feet didn’t hurt, I wasn’t hungry, was no longer thirsty and was ready to head back to Manley. I really love that ferry ride. Either way, the views are beautiful, the water is filled with sail boats and the breeze keeps you from getting too hot, no matter how sunny it is!
Arriving back to the wharf in Manley, I decided to not yet go back to my hotel but instead took off my shoes and took a walk along the beach. Sat down in the sand and read some more, looking up to watch the folks frolicking in the water. I finally decided it was time to head home and take a quick shower after my day in the sun. First I picked up a pizza at the pizza shop on the corner – I had finished eating at Circular Quay early enough that I figured I’d want something to eat again before bedtime (I was right, but one piece was enough and I had plenty of leftovers for Saturday). Then I decided to make use of the DVD player in the room and sorted through the DVDs I bought in Shanghai. I watched “The Devil Wears Prada” and enjoyed it quite a bit. Meryl Streep plays utterly evil so well, and so quietly! I then debated watching “Over the Hedge” before going to bed, but I decided to let it go until another evening.
Apparently, the last few years, they’ve come up with a new thing, which is having a special kind of “test” match that lasts only one day. Many people aren’t sure they approve, but because they’re absolutely insane over cricket, the stadiums still fill up. Cricket is probably why everyone in Australia is entitled to at least four weeks of holiday every year. The matches last five days, remember? People use up five days of their holiday to go sit in cricket stadiums and watch the match. For five days. Egad.
Around 5:30 or so, it was time for Mary to go pick up her niece from Scotland, who is attending university here, to take her around on some errands and help get her ready for the first day of the term (Monday). She dropped me back at the hotel, and I ate my left-over pizza for dinner, did a little more work on my presentations and hit the sack.