Sydney

So we're back in Australia and Sydney is certainly an exciting place to be. It's a beautiful city. They certainly know how to build up the waterfront. Circular Quay (pronounced key), where the opera house is located is just beautiful and a really fun place to hang out. Not only do you get spectacular views of the opera house and the harbour bridge, but there are numerous places to just sit and relax with a drink and enjoy everything around you. The area is filled with street performers, which I love, that provide interesting entertainment. We've hung out in circular quay quite a bit while we were here.

There's also Darling Harbour which isn't as spectacular as Circular Quay, but another nice place to hang out.

We've been busy exploring the city and seeing what Sydney has to offer. Sydney actually has a pretty good Chinatown. We figure that if we lived here, we'd know where the good food was. It's a little hard though when there are so many choices and you're new to the city. But, overall we've been impressed. Despite the large Asian population throughout Australia, we haven't been that impressed with the other Chinatowns we've visited, but Sydney's gets a thumbs up from us.

We spent 1 full day at the zoo here and it was great fun, but of course, I love zoos. The easiest way to access teh zoo is by ferry, so we got a harbour tour on our way over. For $6 extra dollars we also got our own personal tour of all the Australian animal exhibits. No petting an koala bears here, but the tour was extremely informative. The volunteer who took us was very knowledgeable and even though the tour was only supposed to be 1 hour and 15 minutes, she spent nearly 2 hours with us. With most of the exhibits you can get very close to the animals. In fact, quite a few are exhibits where you walk through. You aren't allowed to go off the path to touch the animals, but if the happen to hop on by, you are allowed to interact with them.

Yesterday, we visited Sydney's famous Bondi beach (pronounced Bon-die). Unfortunately, the weather was not great so there was no swimming or sun bathing, but at least we saw it.

Today, we are off to see my relatives in Newcastle. I'm can't wait to see them! It also means that we are going to get to relax for a couple of days and do some laundry :)