Sensational Sydney

From work on Friday we zoomed up the Hume Highway to have a weekend of fun with Aoife, Cath and Eoin. Although we got to Aoife's house just before 9pm, all the girls were still wide awake with excitement! After much giggling and laughing coming from Aoife's bedroom, the girls finally bombed out around 10ish!

Saturday dawned with Eoin and Andy heading out cycling and running, while Cath and I got ready for a day at Taronga Zoo. It was all very novel for our girls to catch a train, ferry and then gondola into the zoo!

 

The view was great from the gondola ride, floating over various enclosures including the elephants!

First stop was the bird show. With various cockatoos, owls, falcon and even a condor, this performance was very cleverly done. The birds swooped low over the crowd and performed little tricks. At the end of the performance, the girls each donated a gold coin, which the cockatoo took from them and deposited into the money box!

We walked via the tigers, mountain goats, meerkats, elephants, gorillas to the fish 'n' chips cafe and then took our order over the grass near the dinosaur display. The day was warming up so we filled our tummies and enjoyed a rest in the shade.

Next on our list was the seal show. Again another wonderful performance by several different types of seals. The show highlighted different characteristics and behaviours of the seals as well as providing important take home messages about the environment.

Unfortunately we headed back to the farmyard only to discover much of it was under renovations, so we moved along to the wombat cave before stumbling upon a spider presentation. Another spectacular backdrop where the girls learnt about red backs, funnel webs and my all time favourite (not) huntsman. The zoo keeper had several live specimens in jars which he took around. The girls were quite funny because as the zoo keeper cam past them they would stand up and climb up another row to see the spiders come past again! I think they did this twice for each of the spiders.

We were all getting very weary by this stage (despite having an ice cream), so we peered in on the seals and penguins on our way back to the ferry.

As you can imagine, there was hardly a peep out of the girls at bedtime!

Before driving home on sunday we took the opportunity to cool off at Greenwich Baths, a little beach on the harbour. All up a lovely weekend - exciting times with special friends!