I Come From a Land Down Under!

Disclaimer: I had one day in Sydney between my travels and thought I would have more time to upload more blog entrys, but only got this one, so it will be another ten days before I can update more because I will be in New Zealand. That pretty much means I'm gonna do a whole lot all at once! Ooops...could've planned better!

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Saturday we woke up a wee bit late, and decided not to go to the blue mountains cause it was quit the trip and wanted to be able to get out earlier. We narrowed down our options and decided on Featherdale Zoo. There is a bigger zoo located right in Sydney, but we heard that this other one was really cool so we decided to just risk it and go to the one less known.

We went to catch the train to Doonside, and rain up to the platform right as the train pulled away, so we spent a bit of time waisting time waiting for the next train. When it finally did come we took the train to Doonside and as soon as we got off the bus it felt as if we were in the middle of no where. There was a tiny convenience store, so we asked where we were to go to get to the zoo, and they gave us directions. The outside of the zoo was not what we expected, but that doesn't matter, cause as soon as we walked in it was awesome.

It definitely wasn't your everyday zoo. The animals were actually contained in the same area as the people. So you would just go around and feed or pet them as you wished. It was filled with animals native to Australia, so that made the experience even better! I definitely give two thumbs up to Featherdale.

They usually let you hold a koala, but it was sleeping when we were there so we just got to pet in. The area with the kangaroo was crazy. They were just hopping around with us, it took me a while to finally get them hopping around on camera, it seemed as if they were camera shy, cause everytime I would start recording they seemed fully content with not moving at all, but as soon as my camera went down, they would hop to their next location.

The most shocking animal we saw was the emu's. I don't know if you are familiar with what an emu is, but they are these huge bird-like creatures. One literally tried to attack Wendy and of course the three of us made quite the scene for the rest of the visitors to the zoo as we screamed and ran away. They really were nasty buggers. I was a bit surprised when we got to the big crocodile and they didn't let it walk around with all the people. Weird.

Along with those animals we saw some dingos, and snakes, (that Jayne and Wendy were terrified of, and wouldn't even look into the cages), a lot of really cool birds, some wombats, tasmanian devils, penguins, cassawari, and so much more! It was a great trip.

On the way back we were trying to get to Newtown because we had asked this cute Australian couple where good places to eat were, and they had told us about this African place and we thought we'd try it out. We ended up jumping on the wrong train and taking quite the detour out of the city. It was freezing that night as well, and the train stop was outside so we all bundled up together trying to force our body heat to generate some sort of heater for the three of us as we waited for the next train back.

Eventually we made it to the restaurant, and enjoyed some African cuisine. We tried cous cous, African flat bread, and I even tried lamb. We thought it was a little funny that we were at an African restaurant and all the waiters were Indian, dressed in African smocks. Don't worry, it was legit, because as we left a few of the waiters got off their shiffs and switched with some real life Africans. Good thing cause we thought that we were just getting conned into thinking it was authentic.

All in all, a great day!