Baby go crazy, break the rules...

Song: "Get Shaky" by The Ian Carey Project

March 21st

ZOO DAY! Luckily, neither Bernie nor I forgot that we had made plans to go to the zoo today, and we woke up early to go so we could see all the animals. Bernie invited Becca along, and the three of us had a great time. We made it to the zoo about when we planned. Missed a train or two, but no worries, mate!

From Taronga Zoo

The zoo was fantastic.

Bernie and Becca also being from the east coast found this as hilarious as I did. Although, I imagine Australians are laughing like crazy when we get excited about seeing kangaroos.

From Taronga Zoo

Here are a bunch of pictures of animals.

The adorable koala:

From Taronga Zoo

A kookaburra!:

From Taronga Zoo

A giant dino-like reptile thing:

From Taronga Zoo

Giraffes, overlooking the city:

From Taronga Zoo

Bernie and me with the metal giraffe:

From Taronga Zoo

Why there were statues of metal children, we may never know:

From Taronga Zoo

Becca with the wild kookaburra chowing down on some fries.

From Taronga Zoo

Here's some dialogue from the Australian zoo guests seeing the kookaburra.
"Billy, go get a longer chip and get him to eat it."- Billy's Mom
(Billy, who is about 5, complains).
"You big chicken." - Billy's mom.
You guessed it. French fries are referred to as "chips" here too.

Zebra:

From Taronga Zoo

Ostriches:

From Taronga Zoo

Seal:

From Taronga Zoo

Bird...ok this is where I stop caring about what kind they are:

From Taronga Zoo

Penguins! They were one of my favorite exhibits.

From Taronga Zoo

Incredibly inappropriate elephant (I can't help it; it's too funny.):

From Taronga Zoo

Bernie with the metal gorilla:

From Taronga Zoo

Gorillas!

From Taronga Zoo

The little one was spunky:

From Taronga Zoo

Wallaby:

From Taronga Zoo

KANGAROOS! (Yeah, they're napping but I don't care.):

From Taronga Zoo

Awesome bird:

From Taronga Zoo

Bernie's favorite, the Victoria Crowned Pigeon:

From Taronga Zoo

Spiders! (not an exhibit, but still an impressive part of the zoo):

From Taronga Zoo

Loose peacock? I've never seen one of those before! haha...

From Taronga Zoo

Tasmanian Devil:

From Taronga Zoo

Reptiles!

From Taronga Zoo

From Taronga Zoo

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Humans!

From Taronga Zoo

They were getting wedding pictures and blocked the entire entrance to the bird show. One fairly rude person (I'm not sure if she was joking or not) shouted that she was only marrying an Asian man for his money. I'm pretty sure this lady was the mother of caretaker of a three year old. This troubled me. Regardless...we went to the bird show and it was awesome. We had birds literally flying inches above our heads.

Bird show!

From Taronga Zoo

From Taronga Zoo

From Taronga Zoo

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They released birds at the end of the show, which ended because their eagle couldn't fly back to the stage. Apparently this happens.

From Taronga Zoo

We were exhausted about now and wanted to wrap up the trip. We did see the lions:

From Taronga Zoo

and tigers...

From Taronga Zoo

and hippos...

From Taronga Zoo

and meerkats. I like that they're all sitting on each other.

From Taronga Zoo

Then we saw a rooster on the loose. What?

From Taronga Zoo

Here's me with the giant stuffed koala at the gift shop:

From Taronga Zoo

Here's another human specimen we found interesting. His shirt reads: "Do something with your life and get me a beer." He couldn't have been 10. We found this humorous.

From Taronga Zoo

We caught the ferry back, then walked to the bus stop, then took a bus to Chatswood, then took a train to Macquarie. We were so tired. But we also had already decided we were going out this evening into town to a place called Argyle.

Every girl we were traveling with on the bus into Sydney had to go to the bathroom so bad that we used the pay toilet on the street. And in the interest of being frugal, we all split the 50 cent bathroom.

Argyle was...um, interesting? I don't know. I was so tired.  I also decided to wear heels, which is fun for about an hour, but then just incredibly painful.  The blister on the back of my heel reminds me about how much of a bad idea that was.  The club was yet again too fancy for my tastes, not to mention they didn't let several of our friends in at the door.  They had to go wait for half an hour, and then one of them ended up getting kicked out anyway.   I was so busy being in pain from the heels that I don't remember anything exciting happening, except that Vilde lost her phone and it was found by the manager.

I must be listening to a lot of club/dance music lately. I'm not saying I enjoy it really, but it does get stuck in my head. "Get Shaky" sounded familiar when we heard it in the bar tonight. So much for immersing myself in Australia's indie music culture. Now that I think about it, I guess I do hear a lot of that too actually.

A group of 5 of us left at a very late hour of the evening and stopped at "Macker's" (Australian for McDonalds) and got something to eat. We made it to the bus stop (by the way Jay, I totally knew where I was going and you were wrong...just saying) and caught the absolute last bus out of the city.  It left at 3:20 a.m.. We got home around 4:30 a.m. and then I slept. Oh did I sleep.