A Tall Tale

Despite this internet cafe being stuffed full of Koreans, I still don't hear the sounds of Starcraft drifting across the room. Neither has anyone phelgmed into an ashtray yet- in fact there are no ashtrays here as you can't smoke in here. In conclusion, I think that I prefer the internet cafes of Australia to the smoke laden, killing the digital enemy as loudly as possible PC bangs of Korea.
But that is beside the point. You'll be wanting to know what I got up to today- and if you don't then what are you doing on my blog??? Well, today I went to the zoo. And why not. The zoo is on the other side of the harbour from where I am based so I caught a ferry across to Taronga Zoo which gave me amply opportunity to take EVEN MORE photos of the Opera House. I seem to remember that damn building being pretty photogenic last time I was here- every step gives you a new view of the soaring sails and the building changes colour as it reflects the sky above etc etc- and now that I have a digital camera I am in the habit of taking too many photos. Therefore, I guess that at some stage I will have to start up a whole new blog just to cope with the Opera House photos. No more, I tell you, no more.

So the ferry ride was a photo-taking fest, not just me, in fact I was pretty laid back about the whole thing compared to my fellow passengers. I still had some space left on the memory card upon arrival at the zoo, for instance. The zoo plus ferry plus cable car ride (cable car isn't working right now though) came to $37, for your info, James.

The lady on the desk was lovely and told me all the great and amazing things to see. I listened, ignored her and dashed off in search of giraffes. Which I found, they are pretty big after all. The giraffes have the best view across the Harbour and not merely because of their long necks. They ate grass, batted their long eyelashes and generally hung around looking all nice and picturesque in front of the Harbour views.

They were great but apparantely there were other animals to see so off I went. And saw the lot- even the wombat deigned to come out of its burrow and walk up and down in the sunshine. The only thing missing were the elephants- the old ones have gone to Dubbo (don't ask me why) while the new ones are still in quarantine. The zoo had provided some nice photos of the new elephants as some small compensation, not really good enough for those of us leaving in a couple of days, however!

I walked and walked and walked again until it was 1.45 and something very important was happening- yep for another three dollars we had the chance to do the zookeepers job and feed the giraffes. They have very long tongues so it was inevitable that there would be a bit of licking going on and sure enough the little blighters swiped my wrist on the way to the carrot I was holding out. But giraffes are pretty much my favourite animal so I would forgive them a little bit of spit.

I had a great day at the zoo- it was worth the money as it was a full day out. I came back and went to The Rocks- the oldest part of Sydney and had a schooner by myself in the Mercantile. Now I am just delaying going back to the hostel since when I get there I will just be picking up that book and finishing it!