Our last Sydney weekend

The next couple weeks are going to have a lot of travel, so this was our last Sydney weekend. We started out by going to a suburb called Glebe, which is almost a tiny little Portland... lost of good international food and cafes, and a street market selling crafts, clothes, food and jewelry. We wandered around there for a while, and then headed out to Bondi Beach to meet Kim and her husband, Karl, and some of their friends for drinks. This is the week of the Melbourne Cup, so most bars have their TVs set on all the races leading up to the big day on Tuesday.

Kim, Karl, and Lori on the beach:















Scotty with the two Tims (Aussie travel personalities and clients of Kim's) and Ed and his moustasche:















Kim and Karl headed home, and we went for some kebabs and falafel at Bondi before heading home. We were suddenly reminded that it was Halloween on the bus home. It's really not a big holiday down here.






































We got back to the hotel, put on our moustaches, and headed down the street to a bar, but no one there was dressed up... nor were they amused by our moustaches. Oh well.

Sunday we walked across the Harbour Bridge. It made me appreciate how insane it was to build an eight lane steel bridge in 1932. The thing is massive! And only cost 16 lives... not bad when you consider they had no safety equipment. When they were getting ready to open it, they loaded it with a couple hundred locomotive engines to make sure it would bear enough weight. It did, and it has. And it's provided some pretty amazing views as well.















At the other end of the bridge is Luna Park:



















It's basically Coney Island, if Coney Island had never gone all seedy (for the record, I love Coney Island). That doesn't mean it's not demented though. They were playing instrumental versions of murder ballads in the children's area, and there are a number of creepy telenovela-style portraits scattered around the rides.

I believe Scotty has a Luna Park video in the works, so I won't spoil anything else for you.

We took the ferry from Luna Park to Darling Harbour and went to Sydney Wildlife World, which includes koalas who have lost so much of their instinct that they'll sleep on the floor:



















And really scary spiders so that you'll never want to walk in anyone's yard here ever again:



















We saw an extremely hyper cassowary and lounged around with the 'roos.















Scotty climbed this cassowary statue at his own risk.



















This is the least obscene picture I have of this guy, who sat around scratching his belly and nards for most of our visit.















Sunday night we went for pasta at a place called Bill & Toni's, and had a good cannoli and coffee at the cafe downstairs afterwards. We then went for a walk with our stated destination being Mrs. Macquarie's chair, but we got distracted by the flying foxes (aka GIANT BATS) in the Domain and never made it. They're really spectacular at dusk... some have wingspans of almost 3 feet. We watched they for a while and then walked down the fleet steps to a pretty night view of Sydney, and eventually wandered home.