Last Weekend

Hello, Everyone! Last weekend was a fun and busy one. On SATURDAY we started the day by going to the aquarium. Here's Rick looking at a spotted eagle ray.

We saw a mammal we'd never seen before: a dugong -- two of them, to be precise. Dugongs are related to elephants and are endangered. In the wild they eat sea grass, but check out their aquarium menu below.

Each dugong eats about 99 pounds of lettuce a day! While we were visiting, two staff people were constantly sending trays of lettuce down into the water for the dugongs.

How's that for a cute face? It's hard to believe that in the past sailors sometimes mistook dugongs for mermaids! You can read more about them here or here. 

After the aquarium we watched chess in Hyde Park. Every time we have walked by, a game has been in progress. There are always spectators, rain or shine.

At one end of Hyde Park is the ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) Memorial, an elegant art deco building built in the early 1930's to honor the dead from World War I. The beautiful design and interesting museum made me think about what things get remembered and honored culturally and what don't.  

The sculptor Rayner Hoff created statues for the exterior of the building that represented the branches of the armed services. The nurse on the right looks like she can handle any crisis (rather like the nurses we know, ahem, Linda, Anne, Ginny, Meryl).

Then on SUNDAY we took a train and a ferry and met friends at a restaurant right on Watson's Bay. The Sydney Harbor is made up of many bays and inlets. When you see the geography, you can really understand how isolated small settlements around what is now one large city would have been from one another. We had a delicious seafood lunch literally just steps away from the water. One of the kids even found a crab on the beach.

After lunch we walked to "The Gap."

 This picture does not do it justice . Maybe try this clip:

It's hard here to see how wild the Pacific is compared to the bay, but it gives you a sense of the terrain (and the wind!). Across the bay you can see the city center of Sydney.

We walked along the South Head Heritage Trail. The "South Head" is the name given to the southern coastline where the Pacific comes into the harbor. This was the first time any of us had seen flowers on a palm tree.

We thought the sand here was a gorgeous orange gold. This is at Camp Cove, a tiny beach.

Here's Sylvia in silhouette. This gives you a sense of the sweeping views form the South Head Heritage Trail. Again, that's the central business district of Sydney in the background.

And these are male Superb Fairy-Wrens. Don't you love that name? We have an Australian bird guide and are trying to figure out what the birds we see and hear are called.

We walked right by.

 Hornby Lighthouse no longer functions but used to prevent many shipwrecks. Manly is across the water.

On the way back to the ferry we walked down a street that had many parrots flying about. These are Blue Mountain Parrots or Rainbow Lorikeets. Flashy, aren't they?

Isn't this a cheeky-looking one?

"Cheeky" is one of the fun British English words they use here. (More on that later).

Phew! This has been a steep learning curve about blogging. We love getting your comments -- although we've been unable to comment back thus far. But hopefully we'll figure that out soon.