A lovely last day of our trip – not counting the almost 30 hours of travel we face tomorrow. Like most things we found here, the Sydney Zoo is expensive for visitors, but you do get the benefit of a wonderful Sky Train lift with a great view of the harbor, as you do if you have lunch in their nice Harbor View Restaurant rather than the food court option. In fact, in all the zoos we have been to, this one definitely has the most unique location. And as much as we believe in the more open “cages” designed to reflect natural habitat, that also means you don’t always get to see the animals as they burrow in or withdraw into the shade. Not a koala bear in sight, although one of the kangaroos did choose to hop so close in passing us to go to another spot in the enclosure that I literally could have reached out and patted its furry head. Thanks to my husband, I saw a platypus which was smaller than we expected, and they had a wonderful “Bird in Free Flight” demonstration with pigeons, cockatoos, falcons, and owls.
Even though we took the “Express Ferry” that had only one stop between Circle Quay and the zoo, you still got a fair size part of the scenic tour of what is allegedly the largest natural harbor in the world. It was certainly busy, and quite clean considering the amount of traffic with all sorts of vessels moving about. You also go very close to the Opera House and on the return trip, there is a great “photo op” of the Opera House and the Harbor Bridge “framed” together. We’ll see how that turns out.
We weren’t aware, however, that Tuesday was a school holiday, and therefore, the ferry schedule was modified and the 10:30 wasn’t running. The end result of the later trip, walking around, and leisurely lunch was that we didn’t go to the Museum of Modern Art as we had initially planned. After all, the cricket match was being decided that afternoon and as it turns out, we were in the room and saw the moment when Australia won. It had been four years without a win of “The Ashes”, as this national head-to-head competition is called, so there was cause for celebration among Australian fans.
There were several small restaurants within an easy walk of our hotel and we had our eye on one that specialized in paella, only to discover that they weren’t open for dinner after all. We slipped into another place, “The Rocks Café”, and unfortunately, for me, their pairings of sides with the kangaroo filet were really not to my liking and considering how busy they were, I wasn’t sure that requesting substitution would work very well. I had a delicious spaghetti Bolognese made using veal, and hubby had lamb with eggplant ragout and minted yoghurt (yes, spelled with an h). It was one final drink in the hotel bar when we returned – my last glass of local wine. Now, a quick word about me and Australian wines. As you often find when traveling in wine making regions, only a small percentage of wines are exported. While I do drink Australian and New Zealand wines, I’m not a big fan. I found the ones “in country” to be more to my liking, and do not expect to really find them to be readily available, but I will keep my eye open.
Travel time tomorrow will be around 26-28 hours depending on if we make all our flights – some of which are a little tight if we encounter any delays.
