It took more than 20 hours of flying to get to Sydney, the other side of the world. I mean, it doesn’t get much further than this (although we are saving up to go to space for whenever that is scheduled) but to be honest it does not yet feel that way. The people: look like me. The city: like any modern western city. The stores: coffeehouses, hotels, bars and a lot of SpecSavers (I think Sydney is going blind, half of all commercials I have seen are for SpecSavers…). So, to make it feel worthwhile we headed to the opera house and zoo!

We have a nice hotel (with a super cool hidden bar in it!) at walking distance of the opera house so off we go! Past several churches, some parks, the botanical gardens right up to the place to be. Guess what: it looks totally different from up close! The wings of the building seem to be made out of fish scales and the whole building oozes 1970’s. The brownish foundation, the fish scales, the yellowish glass… Just look:

Because we have tickets for the opera in February, we head over to the harbour. Sydney is actually a bit like Amsterdam. You have Amsterdam and you have Amsterdam Noord across the IJ and to be reached by ferry. The same goes for Sydney and North Sydney. So, as also befits a pirate, we took to the sea! We hijacked a speed ferry and arrived at our destination a mere 15 minutes later. Unfortunately we were not the only pirates in town, so there was a line in front of the cable cars that would take us to the entrance of Taronga zoo.

After we reached the entrance of the zoo, the first animal that greeted us was a dinosaur. It appears to be the case that kangaroos, platypus and a cute baby elephant are not exciting enough for Australians, so the whole zoo is filled with extra dinosaurs.

We did not let us get distracted by all those extinct species and focused on not getting hurt by a stoned koala falling from a tree and learning about such animals as the quoll. Another highlight seemed to be the petting zoo, with both rabbits and quokkas. Unfortunately the rabbits can only be cuddled at specific times and the two quokkas were soundly asleep..

Time to go home! A bit jet lagged we decided to keep dinner simple and go to bed early before falling asleep in the middel of some bar.