October 22nd, 2005 – Lot’s and Lot’s of Walking.

Saturday morning I decided to head over to the Sydney fish market to see what they had in the way of salmon for dinner. Wanting to leave Laure some quality time alone to finish her graduation essays, I decided to take advantage of my time to wander all around Glebe. I found a water front nature trail that took me all the way around the bay to Bicentenial park. When I left the park I headed to the raceway, not much to see beyond the gates, but you can get a sense of what it would be like full of avid fans and noisy cars. I hit the fish market on my way back and was disappointed with the jacked up prices and lack of ‘Market’ atmosphere. When I arrived at home we whipped up some French toast for lunch and then headed out with the roomies to Bondi. Against my suggestion we decided to walk to Bondi, before Laure and I departed on the scenic walk from Bondi to Coogee. The coastal views were spectacular but I much prefer the quiet isolated treks than the popular tourist trails. The highlights of the walk were the whales we watched off shore and the beginner surfing cove. Although all of these guys were still probably out of my league, I got some great footage of spills more than anything else. Due to extreme exhaustion and the weather turning a little sour, we decided to cut our hike a little short and headed back hoe for a well deserved nap. That night we watched a great foreign film about Africa, that was so good I forgot the name, but good enough that we watched the sequale almost immediately after.

Sunday we headed over to the Taronga Zoo a popular tourist attraction on the North shore of the Sydney harbour. The zoo didn’t disappoint. Although there were some very dated exhibits and heaps of construction, we enjoyed meandering through the exhibits catching a glimpse of tons of different species. We were almost taken out by an eagle during the bird show which had an impressive backdrop of the Sydney CBD across the harbor. The giraffes were well worth the trip and we managed to catch the end of the giraffe keeper talk where they were selling tickets to feed the giraffes. We jumped on the opportunity and got some neat video and still picture up close footage. Laure won the toss and I was going to hold a Koala, but at Taronga there was no holding of Koala’s and so we decided to wait until we headed up the east coast where we can snap some quality pictures. The kangaroo exhibit was nice, but most of the kangaroos were sleeping or eating. Only one jumped the entire time we were in the exhibit and he was such a quick little sucker that I had a rough time keeping up with the video camera. I was a little worried about going to a zoo where the animals were in captivity, but most of the enclosures were roomy and well kept. Some of the animals were definitely a little nutty from being in a cage though. A chimpanzee was playing with a turtle, another monkey was picking the concrete trying to get at something in a crack and a tiger stod up and did 6 360’ turns before wandering to the back of the pen. At the end of the day, I twisted Laure’s arm but finally she let me ride the sky safari, a glorified chairlift, round trip to get an elevated look at the zoo and the harbour. After being on our feet for the entire weekend we headed home and passed out on the couch…who would have thought this travelling thing could be so tiring :). Next weekend its off to the South Coast!