Down Under Day 3: Sydney

Today ended up being (relatively speaking) a pretty lazy day, with only two major sites visited; we spent a lot of time in the hotel sitting around reading.

Our morning stop was the Sydney Observatory, which was the first (and for some time the only) time standard in Sydney. It looked like a lot of the exhibits had recently been redone, as the general theme (other than history) was the recent transit of Venus, and observations of past transits from Sydney. Hands down for me, though, the coolest things in the Observatory were the orreries, mechanical arrangements showing the orbits of the planets and the moons. Exposed mechanical intricacies are pretty sweet:






After the observatory, we grabbed some quick sandwiches at a deli by Circular Quay and boarded a ferry over to the Taronga Zoo. There was a bit of walking involved here, as you can't buy student-discount tickets on the Sydney side of things, and the ticket station at the base of the Sky Safari gondola (which carries you up to the top level of the zoo) was closed. A short hike up to the lower entrance to buy tickets and back to the base of the gondola later, we were flying above the elephant zone to the top of the zoo.




I made the same mistake here as I did last time - thinking that the zoo closes at 5 rather than 4:30 - but we got to see pretty much everything in our just under 4 hours. Wouldn't have hurt to have had a little more time, as we were a bit rushed towards the end. The reptile exhibits are pretty awesome, and we got to see feeding times for some pythons as well as for the tigers! Unfortunately, no platypus showed up, neither outdoors nor in the indoor tanks.




















Omar and EJ acquitted themselves well on the return trip, where I gave them a 5 minute lead from Circular Quay and challenged them to get back to the hotel on their own. After some more reading (Stephen Jay Gould's Eight Little Piggies for me, Game of Thrones for Omar, and some iPod games for EJ), Meat Fest 2012 continued apace, with dinner at Churrasco, a Brazilian BBQ a block from our hotel. I'd say the beef isn't quite as good as what I had in South America, but the lamb...oh man, the lamb. So good. The restaurant had a pretty legit chimichurri sauce as well, and their take on fried bananas was different and good. They were lightly breaded, sugared, and fried with some cinnamon, making them like a churro with a banana rather than bread center. Great cheese bread too!