Side note: everything in the supermarkets is expensive. For example. $12 for a container of Ben and Jerry's. $60 for a liter of absolut vodka. $6 for a cheap bottle of body wash. Ridic. Minimum wage here is $13.50 though so I guess that makes up for it. But it doesn't help when you're traveling on a budget!! Except the Tim tam cookies are only $1.44 so I guess we'll just have to eat cookies all day.
Yesterday we walked around the Royal Botanical Gardens and down to the Opera House. There were tons of different plants, trees, flowers, and some cacti--did you know there are no cacti that are native to Australia?!?Kangaroos and koalas and even palm trees but no cacti, not even in the deserts in the middle of the country. We saw some crazy birds that are all over the city and kind of looked like pelicans...we'll have to do some investigating and figure out what they are. We also saw more cockatoos and huge bats hanging in trees! And they were awake during the day! Dad--remember when you wanted to get a cockatoo?? Really glad you didn't...and you think Lindsey yells too much! Those birds are awful!!!
The Opera House is huge and beautiful. It looks like a big sailboat. Karina said that was common knowledge but iiii didn't know that. (karina knows everything so its not surprising) And right behind it is the Sydney Harbour Bridge...it's an engineers dream, that thing is gorgeous!! Check out the pix from our photoshoot :)
Today we went to the Taronga Zoo and hung out with some animals. We saw our first koalas and kangaroos and wombats! They had a giant Komodo dragon and platypuses and emu which are huge jerks. We went on an Australian walkabout where we could walk next to the kangaroos and emus without them being caged and the emus would run up and peck the sleeping kangaroos and make them move. Fun fact: kangaroos poop while they sleep.
For all you zoo haters out there, this was a very animal friendly zoo and the animals had huuuge spaces to roam and lots of "toys" and "games" to play, they weren't caged and cramped like zoos back home. Also, they do all sorts of wildlife preservation projects, including vaccinating frogs that are being killed by disease in the wild and breeding Tasmanian devils to release in the wild because they are almost extinct. So it's a great place! Mike didn't go to the zoo because he is anti-zoos so we'll just have to wait for his blog to find out what kind of adventures he had for himself today.
Karina, Lexi, mike! If you see this please tell Karina to check her email! My Australian friend just emailed me And he is in Sydney until february 5th! He gave me his contact info so you should hang out with him for Australia day!!!!! His phone number is In the email!
ReplyDeleteCheers!
Miss you!
Carlotta