Upon arriving in Sydney on Thursday night, I was exhausted, having been kept awake until 3:30 am on Wednesday thanks to the drunken University students who have no regard for anybody else on residence. However, I digress. Zach met me at Central and we made our way to our hotel, Travelodge Sydney, on Wentworth and Commonwealth (a five-minute walk from Central Station). Zach had the Vodka chilled in the fridge and we got to pre-drinking almost straight away after catching up for a little while. We mapped out our itinerary for the duration of his stay and he showed me all the happening gay clubs. We changed clothes and headed out to the first club: Stonewall. This was the only gay club was busy before 11pm. We got drinks – vodka cranberry: $7.50 each – and hung out by the stage and people-watched. We also got to see two mostly-naked gay men dance on stage in tiny booty shorts. It was fun and entertaining to watch. Afterwards, we moved on to check out the next club, Arq. This club was set to get busy around 11:00-11:30. We arrived there at about 11:20pm and got some more drinks. The drag show began at midnight and featured talent such as Divine Intervention and Karen. I was pretty drunk and cannot recall the rest of their names. But they were quite entertaining – as drag queens tend to be. From here, Zach and I retired for the night in order to awake fully rested for the zoo on Friday.
Zoo - The Taronga Zoo is a famous Sydney attraction that holds a number of Australian and non-Australian animals. In order to get to the zoo, we took the Captain Cook Cruise across the harbour. We stopped at Fort Denison in order to drop off some passengers and learned that even though some believe it was a jail, it was always only a Fort. Convicts were held there, however, but the official status was never a jail. From here, we made our way across to Taronga Zoo. We took the Skyrail to the entrance and it took us over many of the exhibits. The first animal that we saw from the Skyrail was the female and baby elephants! I was so excited. As we continued throughout the zoo, we were able to see a number of animals including koalas, chimpanzees, emus, kangaroos, pigs, cassowaries, wallabies, lizards, snakes, seals, penguins, komodo dragons, orang-utans, spider monkeys, a male elephant, rams, sheep, and wombats. Despite having two separate platypus exhibits (The Platypus Ponds and an indoor platypus exhibit), I still could not see any. My hunt for the ever-elusive platypus continues. Zach and I also had a Koala experience. He paid to have his photo with a koala, but at this zoo there is no touching or handling of the koalas at all. However, we got to see two koalas together which is apparently very rare. The female koala’s name was Felicity (and I cannot remember the male koala’s name, unfortunately).
We also spent the majority of our nights at Stonewall. They had a lot of entertaining shows but my favourite one would have to be the "Alice in Wonderland" show. The Drag Queen's back home have nothing on these ladies. I did not expect a quality show, mostly because I have seen a Drag show back home, and it's all poor lip syncing and horrible dance moves. However, at this particular club, they had unbelievable costumes, real singing (which was surprisingly really well done), a dance routine and a plot. It was bizarre.
They also did a show that was based on the Glee soundtrack – but it was not as interesting as Alice in Wonderland was.
We went out for a delicious breakfast on one of the mornings, and I ate delicious and reasonably priced omelets. On this day, we walked through King’s Cross – one of the neighbourhoods in Sydney. It started to rain and so we headed back to the hotel. We did not stumble upon anything of interest in this neighbourhood. Our walk around The Rocks and Darling Harbour was much more interesting.
Unfortunately, we did not make it into any museums, galleries, or gardens. But, we did go shopping one afternoon in a gigantic mall that Sydney has, just up from Circular Quay. The boutiques were extremely pricey, but the mall itself had some interesting architectural features. The top of the mall had a domed roof with stained glass windows. There were also many different stained glass windows at each of the stairwells. It also had a wrought iron winding staircase that was not for public use. One of the neatest things was the clock – suspended from the ceiling, it was in the shape of a castle!
That was about all that Zach and I got up to! It was a short, but pleasant visit. I was so thrilled to see Zach and spend some time with a familiar face from home!
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