Day 255, Sydney, Australia
The light rail is next to the park behind our house.
From our stop at Arlington it’s a pleasant 15 minute ride into the heart of Sydney. We got off practically at the steps of the Sea Life Aquarium. You only need to walk across the Pyrmont Bridge over Darling Harbor and the aquarium is across the bay.
The aquarium is below on the right.
This aquarium has two major tanks, one is for sharks.
The second large tank were from Dugong, which we initially thought were manatees. This was the first time we’ve seen this type of marine mammal. It is one of the four species in the order Sirenia, along with three other species of manatees. He was playing with a orange pylon, putting it on his nose and holding it with his front flippers. The aquarist giving the Dugong presentation said they have many toys for the clever Dugong to keep them amused and happy. Dugong don’t have a layer of fat to insulate them, so they are only found in the warm shallow waters of 37 countries, most of them around the Indian ocean. Cali took the Dugong pics.
We spoke to one of the aquarist who was preparing Dugong food. They are herbivores and eat only a certain type of seaweed in the wild. In captivity they like romaine lettuce, and graze on it all day.
This wasn’t the largest or best aquarium we’ve been to, but the Dugong exhibit was a highlight.
After the aquarium we walked downtown to a cinema to see Deadpool. Madi has been wanting to see it since its release, a few countries ago. There are different levels of comfort and pricing for movies. We thought we were going to the most affordable theater by avoiding the Gold standard package. Turns out our tickets of 2 adults, 1 kid, and 1 student still rung in at $91. Wallet hemorrhage. We did see Deadpool on “the largest screen in the world.” Regardless of what standards they are using, it was huge. Are chairs were also extremely posh with huge individual arm rests that were guaranteed to be your own through the entire movie. That was worth something.
We walked back across Pyrmont Bridge. Darling Harbor is beautiful at night. The sound of a large concert was carrying out over the water, but we couldn’t identify the band.
We grabbed some supper, a gourmet burger for Paul, two simple un-gourmet burgers for Madi, Thai rice with tofu for Cali, and the best Cesar salad I’ve had anywhere. We light railed it back to our house, and were enjoying the ride so much we got to our stop sooner than we realized. Paul frantically rushed the door as it was about to close, then it almost guillotined me in half. Luckily the on board ticket helper guy was sitting next to us and had a special door opener gadget to help confused people like us. He opened the doors, which was nice, so we could keep our children. They didn’t have to walk along the tracks from the next stop back to the correct one, since they had no money. Not doing that is always a good way to end the day.