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Published: February 18th 2008
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Fair Day
This was at the GLBT type Fair Day. One of the many Mardi Gras celebrations here in Sydney. This looks towards the Great Hall on campus. A walking tour of Sydney
Brittany and I had mapped out a series of things that we wanted to do today yesterday when we were looking at maps and brochures so we knew we wanted to get some walking in and do some sight seeing. Sam texted me early asking about plans for the day so we made plans to meet up to hang out together with Sarah and Sam and do our sight seeing plan. I don’t know if anyone knew how much we would see and do in one 12 hour period but I know that we are all proud and a little sore now for what was to follow.
Fair Day
Brittany and I left the house at about
11 am to walk to the other side of campus (Victoria Park) where the Fair Day festival was going on. We walked in and out of the gay pride vendor booths and just window shopped on all the beautiful things for sale. We met Sarah and Sam at the pond and then saw the doggie area of the fair. They had an arena with a dog show and the judges and commentators were
Dragon Boat Races
Here is a boat full of breast cancer survivors! beautifully made up drag queens that put on a wonderful show. Then we decided to walk off for our next adventure.
The Darling Harbour: Chinese Dragon boat races
We walked about 2,000m to the Darling Harbour where they were enjoying some extended Chinese New Year celebrations with Dragon boat races. They were long skinny boats that had lots of people paddling to the beat of a drum with someone steering from the back of the boat. The two races that we got to watch were all women breast cancer survivors. It was very cool and impressive.
The Australian National Maritime Museum
On our way to the harbour we saw a sign for a
FREE exhibit at the museum of a frozen mummy of a caveman. We decided that we should check it out. In the museum they had exhibits on how they build ships with pictures from shipyards in Indonesia. They also had an expert there working on a model ship for visitors to see and watch. We saw an exhibit on Jellyfish which turned out to be small and not have almost any actual jellyfish on display, more pictures or artistic representations. Finally
The iceman exhibit
Here is the flyer from the exhibit at the National Maritime Museum. there was a cool exhibit about the caveman mummy and how they found it and what they learned from each aspect of it. We also watched a 50 minute movie on the “Murder of the Caveman”. We found it somewhat amusing but that it tried to trick us with two different theories on the end of the mummy’s life before it told us what they now assume was his cause of death.
The Opera House and Bridge
Then we walked about another 2,400m to the Sydney Opera House. It was a refreshing sight to see and made us feel like we are really here in Australia. We took many pictures of the Opera house from all angles including very close to it. Surprisingly the roof is not actually with. It is more of yellow tones and with some very cool patterns that you can see when you are closer to it. We talked to a man on the inside (literally) who told us about what shows are coming up and how to figure out how to get good deals. We are planning to go see an opera or a show or something because it seems like it
The Sydney Opera House
We took pictures from so many angles but here is one to prove that I am indeed in Australia. would be so much fun.
Royal Botanical Gardens
This is a beautiful places with the best flora and fauna that I have ever seen in the middle of a big city. It has all kinds of specialty gardens and some very beautiful plants and birds. I got very picture happy and took lots of photos. The most interesting thing that we saw were humungous bats (as big as an adult homo sapien’s head) hanging in the tops of all the trees in a particular area of the park. Unfortunately the trees were tall pretty tall and I couldn’t really zoom in enough to get great pictures of them but I sure took a lot. We have many plans on going back to the gardens to see more and just enjoy the wonderful park space.
The Domain / Tropfest
Just across the street from the gardens is The Domain which is another park in the middle of the city. Tonight they were having a live music and short film festival in the domain. By the time we got there after 5:30 the live music was in full swing and there was a huge sea of
Really Big Bats
There were so many trees in the park just like this one covered in the biggest bats I have ever seen. people sitting on the grass surrounding the stage. Above the stage were three hug screens so people could sit a full 360 degrees around the stage and they were crystal clear even from very far away. It started to sprinkle and we were cold because we were clothes for the day weather not chilly breezy nights so we walked towards the town trying to find a coffeehouse to warm up in. The only thing that we could find that was open was Starbucks so we took shelter for a while and got back to the Domain just before the short films started. We watched about 7 shorts before it started to rain again. We were not prepared to get wet and were on the verge of being cold anyways so we caught a cab (for a reasonable $14.30) back to the Sydney Uni area to grab some dinner. We walked along King street that has all the eclectic cuisine and decided on a Turkish place. Brittany and Sarah had chicken Kabobs and Sarah and I had Turkish pizza which is basically a flatbread kinda pizza or calzone.
Sore feet
I know I have some blisters on the
Tropfest
This was during the music portion and by the time we came back for the films there were at least a thousand more people in the vicinity bottom of my big toes from walking in my Chaco sandals all day with them a little lose but my feet are also just tired from the amount of time we spent on our feet. We got back to the House just before
11 pm to complete a full day of on the go activities. Tomorrow we have an international student orientation at the Uni so we hope to learn more about how the internet system works so hopefully I can be much speedier in sending things out and replying to you. Hope you are having a wonderful time.
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