Sightseeing Like Tourists

One hears Sydney and two to three things come to mind. The Opera House, some weird bridge, and the Olympics. We just missed the Olympics by about 12 years, but we did stroll over towards the Opera House. All I can really say about it is…huh? For those of your unfamiliar with the opera house, it is one of the oddest architectural structures known to man. The crazy Aussies decided it would be a great idea to build a really abstract opera house, maybe it helps with the acoustics, maybe they’re just determined that nothing be normal.

It Kind of Looks Like the Pope's Hat

So we stroll on over and start ooing and ahing at it. We were staring out over the harbor and vaguely watching the seagulls and other activities of the bay, basking in the radiance of the city. We kept looking blankly and watched two gulls fly across making lots of noise, but then my mom exclaimed, “those aren’t seagulls those are cockatoos!” For anyone who doesn’t care about birds please skip the next bit, you will be alerted when to resume. We were pretty sure she was right and looked across the harbor. From there we saw a tree that seemed full of cockatoos. Of course we had to walk over and investigate. We found ourselves in the botanical garden, and every few feet we went a bird would appear to show off. There was a killdeer on steroids with a yellow beak, then an ibis, then parakeets, etc etc. The farther we walked the louder and louder the cockatoos got. For those unfamiliar, cockatoos are possibly the loudest creatures on earth, rivaled only in volume by the lion, whose roar can be heard for five miles across an open plane, and a wailing child, who emits by far the least pleasant sound known to man. (Note to reader: we had all agreed not to go birding within the city of Sydney. We failed.) Eventually we decided to about face and return to the Opera House. Of course a pelican appeared to see us off (pelicans are awesome).

Cockatoos, the Houdini's of the Animal Kingdom

NONBIRDERS RESUME READING HERE. We returned to the Opera House for a very important reason, to use the bathroom. Normally I would leave this detail out, but this was the most incredible bathroom I’ve ever seen. I did not take pictures though, that would’ve just been weird. The stalls had a wave formation to them, so they were all different sizes. Also the sink had a similar theme and it looked at though the water simply flowed off the back onto the floor (there was another tray to catch it so I did not spill water all over the floor of this famous Opera House). The other attraction was the bridge. We looked at it, looked at it some more, took some pictures, and then left. alright, we were too tired to walk over it.