Shades & Parades

On March 3rd, where do you think Sarah and I went? To the beach of course! Bronte this time. And we brought our American friend Melissa along. If you couldn't tell, we like the beach. It's a swell place to spend some time. There's not much to say about this trip, so I'll just let you sit back and enjoy the view.

Here are the three of us at an "american" bar, Shady Pines. Apparently it's american because there are stuffed moose and deer heads mounted on the wall! Apart from that, I immediately took a liking to this place. The lighting, decor and staff made it feel as if I had walked into a different time.

On Saturday the 5th, we attended Sydney's world famous Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade. Here's Sarah and me before the parade, not quite sure what to expect from the evening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 As you can see from the picture above, this parade draws quite the crowd. So many come that there are people on the sidewalks selling stools for parade goers to stand on. Sarah is doing a semi-decent job of protecting our stools with her life. At first the idea of buying a stool to see a parade seemed a bit too hard core for me, but I would definitely recommend it. I had no idea how fun it was to be 7 feet tall. You can see everything up there! And I only felt slightly bad for the people standing behind us.  Below is a picture of the first attraction at the parade: lovely ladies from Queensland on their motorcycles:

And here are some wanna be life guards (stay between the red and yellow flags!) I won't narrate all of these photos, but I think they will give you just a tiny tiny taste of what we experienced.

And here's what our sidewalk looked like at the end of it all. Glitter and confetti everywhere!! It was quite the fun time. Definitely the most memorable parade I've ever been to. And that was that. More in a bit.

We're alive!

And we're back in action! I apologize for my extended absence.  I admit I became a bit lazy in the blogging department, but I promise I will try not to let that happen again. Key word here being "try." So where were we? Oh, yes. On Monday February 28th, Sarah and I headed over the the Sydney Aquarium. While there we had the pleasure of seeing all the beautiful and deadly creatures in the sea. A few of our favorites included sharks of all varieties, jelly fish, octopi, etc. It was pretty much your standard aquarium. Here's me as I am about to be dropped down to the depths of the ocean!

We spent a good deal of time with the dugongs at Mermaid Lagoon. At first I thought dugongs were the same as manatees, but I have just learned now with the help of Wikipedia, that dugongs and manatees are different species but belong to the same order Sirenia. Here's Sarah sitting besides a lovely lego mermaid at the lagoon.  Legos were a theme at this aquarium.

And here's a dugong in the flesh:

The highlight of the trip for me was seeing the platypus. He was a very fast swimmer so it was hard to capture him with my camera. This venomous mammal was just so darn adorable.

On Tuesday March 1st, Sarah and I went to Coogee beach. It was rather deserted on the day we visited so we almost had the beach to ourselves. Here are a few pics:

Winos, Dinos and the Gap

On Saturday February 26th, Sarah and I went to the New South Wales wine festival which was held in Hyde Park. For a small fee Sarah and I were able to taste five different wines from the state and we were even able to keep our plastic commemorative wine glasses! At least they won't break on the plane ride home. Since it was a pretty scorching day, we decided to only try the chilled wines. We took note of a couple of our favorites. Here's me in front of the Warburn Estate tent. Our other favorite was the Moscato from the Savannah Estate. 

 

Having tasted the number of wines allowed within our budgets, we walked across the street to the Australian Museum.  There I was immediately greeted by a large T-Rex! Oh my!

There really isn't much to this museum. It consists mostly of a large collection of stuffed birds and other animals. If you are visiting Sydney for a short period of time, I would recommend keeping this at the very bottom of your to do list or just leaving it off completely. But since Sarah and I have nothing but time on our hands, we decided to give it a fair go. And we can have fun doing just about anything, as can be seen below. Here's Sarah terrorizing a penguin. I thought you loved penguins??

Here I am standing in the shadow of an average sized human. Hmm...

And here's Sarah again at a real live dinosaur dig! She really enjoys her work.

Here I am again being eaten by a T-Rex.

ttt

Some people like to call Sarah Muskie or DJ Muskie Musk, and look what we found! Sarah's very own rat-kangaroo. How special.

 

On Sunday we ventured off to Watson's Bay which is an eastern suburb. As you can see in the photo below, it offered an excellent view of downtown Sydney.

If you walk in the opposite direction, you will find the Gap, a beautiful ocean cliff. 

And here's a photo of the actual bay. It turns out we didn't make it to the part of the bay where people actually go swimming. We couldn't find it. But I am happy to say we have just today located it on a map and plan on returning to the bay soon.

And that was that. I would just like to make a note here that this blog post took me 3+ hours to create due to some technical difficulties and a fussy internet connection. I would really appreciate if everyone reread this about fifteen times so I feel like my time was well spent. Thanks! Hopefully more will be coming in a bit.

Manly

On Thursday Sarah and I went to Manly Beach which is on the north side of Sydney. Manly can be reached by bus, but Sarah and I decided to take the ferry there instead. The ride was simply beautiful. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and the ocean's breeze eased the heat of the sun.

(this is fred)

 

Once we arrived back at the harbor, we had to catch a bus back to our apartment. The driver got into an argument with an old man on the bus and as a result everyone got kicked off! Someone needed a hug. And that was that.

Gardens & Towers

Located right next to the Sydney Opera House, are the Royal Botanic Gardens. We decided to venture in and see what we could see. What we found was a vast variety of trees and flowers from all over the world. This is one of the many many Harry Potter trees Sarah and I stumbled across:

 This is the Governor's House:

 

Here are other various things we saw at the gardens:

After our garden tour, we decided to check out the Markets by Moonlight down by the Rocks.  We wandered through aisles of tents filled with hand made products and made our way to the live entertainment.  This week the special guest was Australia's own Ngaiire (the musical guests are of course always Australian). Ngaiire walked onto the stage dressed in a bird like costume, feathers and all. I wasn't sure what to expect from her, but I was very pleasantly surprised. And of course I was sitting there enjoying the music and snapping pictures, only to realize I had left my memory card at home! Yup. Pretty standard. So I apologize for the lack of visual aids, but if you are interested you should really take a listen. It's worth your while: http://www.triplejunearthed.com/NGAIIRE

And here is a sweet pic taken on the way home (with Sarah's camera of course):

On Saturday we headed off to the beach, this time Bronte! Equal in beauty to Bondi, but a bit smaller. We stayed on the sand for a good period of time then indulged in some delicious fish and chips. The fish here is really really good, as you might imagine. Love me some fish and chips!

Every night as Sarah and I sit out on our balcony enjoying dinner and the setting sun, we can't help but notice Sydney Tower on the horizon. As Sydney's tallest building it's hard to miss, and it was calling our name. No longer able to resist, Sarah and I heeded the tower's call and made our way downtown on Wednesday evening and we had perfect timing. Here's what we saw:

After hangin' out for an extended period of time, I forced Sarah to go on this virtual reality ride through the different regions of Australia that came free with our tower passes.  We expected it would be horrible and it was. Not only was the video below par, but the spastic activity of our chairs made no logical sense. Unnecessary roughness.  Sorry, Sarah. My bad. Luckily it was a short ride and Sarah and I escaped with only minor bumps and bruises. Here's Sarah before she had fully realized what she had gotten into:

Oh, can't you just feel the tension in the room? And that was that. More to come in a bit...