The Fellowship of the Ring of Fire, Part 9: Sydney

Our next destination was Sydney. Sydney was wonderful! There's so much to do and public transportation is top notch, but expensive. We began walking around Circular Quay where the Sydney Opera House is located. That building is drop dead gorgeous, if architecture can be described that way. Almost every angle is postcard-worthy. AND it's on the harbour, so the main backdrops are the Sydney skyline, the Harbour Bridge, or just water.

We walked around a really neat district called The Rock where every weekend there's a huge market near the bridge that sells just about anything from kangaroo jerky to handmade soaps. We sat down to eat at a German restaurant where all the waiters and waitresses are dressed in traditional clothing. A nice couple sat next to us. We began to talk about what we were doing here, where we were from, etc. They suggested several things to do in our 4 days there, and we did about 90% of what they suggested.

The Australian Museum was very well done. It's a natural history museum. We saw some really interesting things like the bizarre and wonderful mating practices of birds of paradise. We also saw how the feathers of these bright colored birds are used to compose head dresses for high-ranking tribal members.

The exhibits were very immersive. There was an exhibit on many of the dangerous animals in Australia. The sound is very real and there are creatures hanging out on the walls of the exhibits as if they came to life and are trying to escape. The dinosaur exhibit even had one of its life-size specimens step out of the exhibit. And there's a particularly terrifying animal I had never seen before. It's a giant prehistoric cousin of the wombat the size of a grizzly bear. I usually don't get scared easily at these kinds of exhibits, but these were scary.