Sydney Aquarium and Maritime Museum

I should probably start today's entry with a warning:

BABOO - you might not want to read this. :-)

So today I went to the Sydney Aquarium, and certainly wasn't disappointed! They have exhibits on a wide variety of aquatic life found in Australia, including platypus, saltwater crocodiles, fairy penguins, and of course the Great Barrier Reef and tons of sharks. The first half of the aquarium was pretty standard - a variety of large and small tanks with different fish and invertebrate species. But what makes this aquarium special are the three habitats they have installed in the harbor. In the sea lion and open ocean habitats, there are tunnels that you walk through so the animals are swimming beside you and over your heads. Very cool. And for the grand finale, the Great Barrier Reef exhibit, there's actually a segment where you walk through a glass tunnel that also has a glass floor - so you're surrounded on all sides by the fish, turtles and sharks. It was very, very, very awesome. Unfortunately, my skills at taking pictures inside aquariums is limited, and I don't have any which are good enough to post here. So you'll just have to take my word for it - the experience was worth it.

There were about forty million school kids at the aquarium today, so I didn't stay for as long as I had originally hoped. There is only so much I can take, after all! What I thought was really funny is that all through the aquarium they have posters about the movie "Finding Nemo", listing the different species of fish from the movie that are on display in the tanks, and encouraging kids to find them. So I spent most of my morning surrounded by little kids yelling "Hi Nemo!" and "I see Dory!" at the top of their lungs. :-)

On the invert side of things, they had these incredible anemones on display which were almost a metre across their disk! And cuttlefish, which I love watching because of their ability to change colour. I also liked the rock lobsters, some of which were truly enormous.

After the aquarium, I wandered around the perimeter of Darling Harbor to the Maritime Museum. This turned out to also be a terrific museum - and it was free! I wandered around inside for over an hour, guided by a very nice elderly volunteer from the museum who was only to happy to show me his favorite displays in the museum. Considering it was free, I was surprised at how empty it was. But anyone who's interested in ships, exploration, and naval history definitely needs to come and visit this museum. There were also several ships anchored in the harbor which belong to the museum, but it cots extra to tour them so I gave that a pass.

I had a bit of an adventure trying to find my way back home at the end of the afternoon. I was pooped so decided that I'd catch the monorail back to the train station - but after climbing the eight zillion steps up to the monorail platform, I discovered that my transit pass doesn't include the monorail! Groan. So I trudged (slowly) back to the train station and caught the train back to Caringbah. When I got up to street level at Caringbah station, I took a wrong turn and ended up completely disoriented - and I couldn't find a bus stop to save my life! I eventually flagged down a bus and told the driver which street I was looking for, and as luck would have it, his bus was going right past my street! Unfortunately, the driver and I got to chatting and we completely missed my stop. I had to sit on the bus as it completed its loop and the driver finally dropped me off near my street on his way back to the train station. All in all it took me an hour longer than I'd planned to get back to Ruth's house. I'm now wondering whether I'd be able to survive on a show like the Amazing Race, considering how many times I've managed to get lost/disoriented in Sydney these past few days!