Thanks again to Stuart Norris of Magic Memories here in Sydney, we had passes to visit the Sydney Tower, OzTrek, the Wildlife Experience and the Sydney Aquarium, which we saw earlier this week. My Aunt Helen and Uncle Edwin joined us for the Sydney Tower and it was really nice to have someone who could tell us what we were looking at. Sydney is really a big city from this high up! We passed on the part of the experience where you walk on a glass floor like 40 stories high! Thankfully, you had to be 10 years old to do it, so I was able to deflect the blame from my fear of heights!
After spending time looking all over the city, we grabbed a quick lunch in their cafe. I was in the mood for a meat pie and their's was pretty darn good! I give them high food marks for a tourist attraction. Not only was it good (even Sydney ate her sandwich and believe me, that was a food miracle on this trip!), but it was also quite reasonable priced.
After lunch, we did the 2nd part of the Sydney Tower experience, OzTrek. I gotta' say, we really enjoyed OzTrek. We enjoyed the special effects and had lots of fun in the ride film! They start with something like the old House of The Future at Disney, where you move through four differents vignettes that describe different parts nof Australia. The ride film portion further extends this experience while putting you right into the experience. I thought they even had good storyline for a ride film, no shake and bake storyline here!
Next, Sydney & I went to the Apple store to do a quick iChat with mama back home. It's been fun for Sydney to be able to do that! We even did a video iChat with Sydney's class back home last week.
We then went to Wildlife World down by the aquarium. Quite honestly, I wasn't expecting much and I was really surprised at how much we enjoyed this attraction. It was well laid out with much more there then you'd expect. Sydney even liked it better then the zoo and we had a great day there.
The first thing you encounter is the spider exhibit -- I'm guessing they really like their spiders here. And some of these suckers are really big. Not just I'm afraid of spiders big. I'm talkin' the size of a small dog big. Big, hairy, ugly and, oh yea, the deadliest spider in the world. Don't they have Orkin here?
More encounters with kangaroo's here, again, in a pretty open area. They also had a great butterfly enclosure and Sydney had fun there. One big wombat and a very colorful thing that looked like an ostrich but was really a cassowary (not sure of the spelling) and was a lot more colorful. One of their guides (her name was Joy), really spent a great deal of time with Sydney & 2 other children teaching about reptiles and letting them play with a small python. Once again proving the importance of hiring great people.
Afterwards, we met Gavin Heaton (Twitter handle servantofchaos) at the Lindt chocolate cafe where Sydney had a hot chocolate that was one of the best she's ever had. I had to take pictures of the presentation -- a cup of chocolate, a cup of steamed milk and the cup to mix them in. Sydney said it was even better because she got to make it herself. We had a great conversation about all sorts of things related to social media with Gavin and David Wesson, a friend of Gavin's. It's fun to see someone in person when you usally only see them on twitter. Later, Sydney & I went to join the Sydney Twitter Underground Brigade. By this time, Sydney was getting pretty tired and the fact that she let me drag her to a networking event is credit to what a great kid she is. But, she was excited that she got to tell them all about Webkinz. Strange how few people outside the US know about Webkinz, given how huge it is in the States. But, if you're in social media and/or virtual worlds, you should know about Webkinz. E-mail me if you'd like to schedule a visit with Sydney to learn how it works.
Another great day in Sydney! Just really two days left, so we'll be doing some cramming! BTW, if you've noticed that I have less spelling mistakes in my Travels with David posts like this, you have to thank Sydney. She's been my editor on this trip and she's doing a great job!
As always, a special thanks to Mindz (http://www.mindz.com/) for making Sydney's trip possible!
Sent wirelessly from Nokia 9500 & T-Mobile
It was great to catch up with you David, and nice to meet Sydney here in Sydney ;)
Hope you had a great stay here!
Posted by: Gavin Heaton | September 27, 2008 at 02:31 AM