Sydney, Australia: We got a late start to the day today due to the weather. It is fairly dismal outside and forecasted to stay the same for the rest of the week. We are going into Sydney today, but will have to look around for other places to find sunshine tomorrow and Friday.
We parked down near the harbor again and wandered over to the Circular Quay. Once a working port, this is now where the cruise ships dock and is the main tourist area near the Harbor Bridge and Opera House.
We wandered around for a bit, but every time we started to head out from under cover the rain would pick up in intensity. Eventually, we gave up and decided to get lunch.
There was food too. Schnitzel is surprisingly popular here (well, not that surprising – a piece of meat flattened out, breaded, and fried? what’s not to love?) with a variety of sauces.
After lunch we headed over to the Contemporary Art Museum.
When we first went inside, the museum seemed to be somewhat lacking in art, contemporary or otherwise. However, after going through the floors of meeting spaces, auditorium, and libraries, we ended up at the galleries. We spent quite a while looking at the exhibits and then headed back outside.
Fortunately, the weather had improved a little bit. Now, instead of showers mixed with downpours, we had mist / no rain mixed with showers. We took advantage of the opportunity and headed into the park / botanical gardens directly behind the Opera House. On the way we passed what looked like a collection of Roman ruins. However, unless the Romans did some stuff I never heard of, I don’t think they were.
In reality, it is an art work called “Memory is Creation Without End” by the Japanese artist Kimio Tsuchiya. The pieces are remnants from demolished buildings in Sydney.
The entire park was quite large and had an impressive array of plants / flowers.
We also saw some things that reminded us that everything in Australia will kill you given the opportunity.
We continued to walk through the park eventually arriving at a botanical advertisement for their display of carnivorous plants.
It started to rain a bit again, but we continued on through the collection of trees and flowers.
About this time, Kelly noticed a number of birds flying over head and asked if they were bats (as Lisa mentioned in the comments from yesterday’s post). After looking at them for a bit, we realized they were definitely bats.
These are some pretty poor pictures of them, but that second one looks like Commissioner Gordon has sent up the Bat Signal.
We continued walking down towards the point where we could see back towards the Opera House and Harbor Bridge.
It began to rain harder, so we decided to start heading back towards the car. However, we then realized that the trees above us had a constant flow of bats landing, resting, and taking off.
So, we stood in the rain staring up into the trees and pointing the bats out to each other. After about 20 minutes of this Kelly commented that it was a good thing we had decided to hurry back to the car – we had made it about 100 ft during that time, because we were transfixed by the bats. Also, these were not small bats like I have seen before. Instead they seemed more like small dogs with wings.
We finally decided to get moving again as the rain picked up. However, we were quickly distracted by colorful flowers off in different directions and made a far less than direct path towards the car.
From time to time the rain would pick up in intensity and we would pick up our pace. But then, the rain would taper off, and so would our forward progress.
Eventually, the steady rain turned into a downpour and we were soaking wet by the time we got back to the car.
At that point we decided to call it a day and headed back to the apartment to dry off.