Tom's in _______

Last couple days we exhausted the interesting things going on in Sydney, so we visited the Wildlife World and the Aquarium. There was an amazing amount of animal life diversity there, so I'll let the pictures do most of the talking.

The flight home was among the worst I've ever had. I was sitting in Economy, which had even less leg room than I remember. I spent the entire 13 hour flight with my knees in the seat in front of me or standing in the aisle while the very polite Canadian couple next to me went to the bathroom. It's a good thing I didn't try to sleep that much, because that would not have been remotely successful (and when I did try to, it wasn't). Luckily, my laptop lasted long enough for me to watch 2 movies, so I watched Hamlet 2 (had it's funny moments, but seemed to be trying too hard) and 3 Fast 3 Furious (utter garbage, but I like cars and I have to get caught up for 4 Fast 4 Furious). All in all, I'm glad to be back.

Pictures

A Crocodile

Huge Ants

A Baby Koala (awwww)

This duck isn't moving for anything

Oh sign writers, you're so funny

Oh shit! A shark

Oh shit! A turtle!

SE Asian Restaurants: 6

Page in Blink: Still 98

12/30: We visited the Powerhouse Museum, which was very interesting. They had a traveling Star Wars exhibit that was very interesting. Later we played Laser Tag, which was a lot of fun and we visited Luna Park, home of the incredibly sketchy sign.

New Years Eve: The city is absolutely packed. Entire parks are cordoned off at noon for the fireworks show at midnight. It is utterly insane. There are people everywhere, most places already have people camping out for a good viewpoint of the fireworks. I am really, really glad we already have tickets for Goat Island. Nothing interesting happens during the day because everyone is much more interested in the fireworks.

6:30 rolls around and we board the ferry to Goat Island, a national park in the middle of Sydney Harbor. We have tickets to watch the fireworks from a lawn facing the Harbor Bridge. The ferry we get on is packed to the rafters, 400 people get on. Personal space is a quaint memory. Around 7:30 we get to the lawn and get ourselves situated, enjoy a picnic dinner and set in for hours upon hours of waiting. There is a "family" fireworks show at 9, which was the best fireworks show I'd ever seen, which was a great way to break up the waiting. They followed that up with a "parade" of ships through the harbor, that was less impressive (mostly just ships with Christmas lights forming very crude shapes on the sides). I spent most of the waiting time listening to my ipod, while the rest of my group slept and (seemingly) everyone else got plastered. Then it was midnight.

Holy. Freakin'. Shit. The fireworks were amazing. I never knew what 6 million dollars worth of fireworks looked like, but now I do (about 15 minutes of constant light and explosion). Goat Island was between 2 fireworks barges, so we got explosions from the front and the back. It was like we were being shelled. The fireworks were so bright they lit up the air around us and we could see each other without any aid. The finale was a number of streams of fire coming off of the bridge and surrounding buildings, and it was spectacular. I don't think my words can do it justice, hopefully pictures (and video) can.

New Year's Day: It seems as though the entire city is nursing a massive hangover. Barely anyone is out and there are a lot of stores closed. We take it slow, the only thing we planned to do that day was climb the Harbor Bridge. We get to Bridge Climb and I am immediately impressed by the scale of the operation. They have groups going in an out, getting suited up, derobing and gawking as a well oiled machine. They must have had 100 people in their store/operations center. When we actually got out to climbing the bridge (in our matching jumpsuits, natch) we got blasted by wind. It must have been about 20 mph, blowing us every which way. As someone who normally gets freaked out at heights, I was surprisingly calm. I think it was because I was too fascinated with their harness mechanism that used a very clever rotational locking mechanism. I'll stop there. As amazing as climbing the bridge was, what really annoyed me was how much waiting we did on the bridge. In the time we were actually climbing the bridge, there were 5 groups in front of us, each of which we had to wait for while they took pictures. In the 2 hours we were out "climbing" on the bridge, we probably only spent 30 to 40 minutes climbing. But it was still an amazing experience. The views were outstanding, we could see for miles. Unfortunately, their picture system was down, so I don't have the photos yet, but I will get them.

For dinner we took at ferry out to Manly, which was a very nice beach, but very crowded and very touristy. I can understand why it's lauded as the greatest beach in Australia, but I don't feel a particular need to go there during the day, when it will surely be twice as crowded as when we were there at night.

Pictures (and Video):