Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Aquarium at the Darling Harbour

The aquarium in Sydney is one of the most popular tourist destinations . Since Somil , my colleague and a good friend was coming down from Bangalore along with another colleague , I was pretty excited . I was very desperate to have a view of this aquarium and finally Somil and I went there on a Sunday afternoon .

The aquarium is located at the Darling Harbour ,which is a beautiful place . It acts as the starting point for most of the cruises that take you around Sydney . It also has this aquarium and a wild life sanctuary and loads of restaurants which make huge business coz of the location . Basically, its an ideal place for tourists !!

After having lunch at a n Italian restaurant where I had vegetarian risotti and Somil had Burito , we headed towards the Aquarium after a short photo session at this picturesque Darling Harbour. This is my friend Somil - as he claims , " intolerably handsome !!"With this ,we went in and what followed was a .splendid and a sensational experience which is very difficult to describe . I have put in many of the pics that I thought were interesting and this post and the following posts shows you different kinds of fish that are present in this heavenly place . Here goes....
We saw loads oish and loads of them !! These were like the starters . All the small and the cute ones came first before they paved the way for the big ones !!!
Another variety which was part of the hordes of different kinds of Australian Bass fish . These are extensively found in the ocean. My friend was just wondering , rather his mouth was watering at the thought of tasting this. Shame on you Somil !!
This variety was called the Macquire perch. More plumpy than many of the other ones.
This was the Crocodile !!! There were a few crocodiles and alligators. There was a very interesting board which said that crocodile meat tastes like chicken as they have the ingredient white chicken which makes them taste very much like chicken that people love to eat!! Not the greatest of thoughts atleast from my perspective, I must confess !!
This was the fishy eel . Simply stunning to look at.
Voila ! There were even penguins there to our surprise !!! Super ones and so many that too !!
Here were some more of another variety of fish.
These were the seals from the outside ...
This was the view we got from the inside. More on the pathway and the lovely experience. Since it was a Sunday ,there were loads of people , mostly kids with their parents. SIMBLY beautiful !
More beautiful seals ....
This was the pathway where we could take a look at these seals and the sharks ( which are coming soon ....) . They have made it so beautifully that its such a tremendous feeling walking on this path and getting a feeling of being literally surrounded by all these amazing creatures - left, right , top ..... I was truly mesmerised by the beauty of this place.
This above pic is that of an shark egg !!!!! This is lit and there are controls here that you can move and zoom in and have a different look at this shark egg. Scary sight indeed !!

The above 2 pics are of sharks... We have just entered the shark world.....More pics to follow...
The above pic is of the sharks which queue up near the "ingress port of the interface" if I may say so . They all kind of wait for the fresh water that comes in and it was a lovely sight.
Forgot what these are called but different kinda fish .
Shark yet again , this time in another oceanarium.
More sharks !
This one was just above the glass covering and in this case, it was right above me !!! Surely,there was a chill down my spine !!!

Aquarium at the Darling Harbour - the end

Well right at the end of the aquarium is this master piece , which is just outside the oceanarium which has a good collection of fish that are present in the Gold Coast. Transparent windows , with a lovely greenish tinge on them with the water world on all sides is more or less a dream and I was on top of the world to have experienced this .
I was completely overcome by the beauty of this fantastic place :-)
Yet another pic :-)
As I already mentioned , this is on located at the Darling Harbour. The above pic you can see three things - the monorail at the back which runs from Darling harbour to other parts of the city, a couple of ships and my friend Somil.

Friday, April 06, 2007

Easter in Sydney - V 1.0

Our purpose for the day was to visit Blue Mountains. In order to get there we had to take a train till this place called Karoomba Station and then go and explore in the Explorer bus. Its kinda costly but worth every cent ! Blue Mountains is very much a tourist destination and since the hols have just started here, the rush was obvious. So here goes the description !

The World is small indeed. I was told by Nithyanand that Kiran who accompanied us to Bondi Beach was leaving today and another person by the name Praveen was going to join us. So when the 2 of them boarded the train at North Sydney , I saw this guy and viola ! He stays like 2 mins from where I stay in Bangalore and moreover , we have played cricket together ! But since it had been a while, I had not met him and had no idea that he would be in Sydney ! Nice surprise anyways !

The train journey was for around 2 hours and we landed up there at the Karoomba station at around 10.45am . My two companions though were totally shivering as it was raining and since this place was well above the sea level , it was realllllllllly cold out there !! Much more colder than Sydney ! They bought cool Aussie jerseys . Story to do with this coming up later :-).
As we reached Karoomba station , we were all very hungry and tried our hand at some Veg sandwiches and I can safely say it was the worst sandwich I had ever tasted in my life . Thankfully soon enough there was this place called Chocolate which offers various dishes made out of chocolates (Sorry pics are not put up here . We were too busy filling our stomachs !!) and some pastries and ice cream at this place set us up for the remaining of our journey.

The Explorer carried us through and the concept being that it would drop us of at whichever place we wanted( We had to refer to a map to see where we wanted to get off ) and then there were other regular buses coming in every 30 mins or so to get us in and to the next station.

We reached this stunning place called Skyway Eastern Anchorage and learnt that this was a good place to go around and trek too . First of several wonderful pics coming up.
The next pic was taken at the Skyway. The fog there was really dense and the place was hardly visible initially and as the sky cleared the whole place began to look more splendid ! By the minute. The Blue mountains as the backdrop,except for sometime did not appear blue coz' of the clouds and the fog but absolutely no regrets as it offered us some of the best views I have had in my entire life !!!!
This was the gorgeous deep ravine sort of thing that totally blew our minds ! FANTASTIC !
But the truth was we felt that it was God's own coutry !!!
more coming up....

Easter in Sydney - V 2.1

Another pic from another location . There were so many different kinds of lookouts. It was wonderful.
The above pic was that of the kinds of paths that we traversed through. It was really exciting to move through with so much of greenery around !
Me !!!!!!!!! This was special coz' this was the first time we had seen anything so beautiful . Guess the three of us were so excited that each one of us were kinda speechless for a while.
The pic above : A lovely sight indeed. The pic below : No comments though atleast the backdrop was simply stunning !!!
V 3.0 coming up !!!!

Easter in Sydney - V 3.0

The 3 sisters are what they are called and are they beautiful or what !!! The history behind this being that there were seven ridges initially and due to erosion these three remained. The aborigins consider this to be a symbol of sacred blessing . This can be seen from the Echo Point which is a famous tourist spot . The background as is visible is simply amazing and the weather conditions just added to its beauty.
This is the ambitious me with the three sisters :-).
This was yet another view from Echo point . No words to describe the beauty . Period.
Again me at Echo point.
More pics coming up.

Easter in Sydney - V 4.0

The scenery pics continue !! These were the 2 jerseys they bought ! These were the 2 guys in the backdrop of the stunning mountains behind. Later on, when we were getting of the bus to catch the train back to Sydney Central ,the bus driver told us , looking at their jerseys, "I think you guys will start playing cricket better now ! Reason : Coz; you are wearing the Aussie jerseys!!" We were like, this was one thing that was pending and that also happened ! Thanks to the Indian Cricket team :-).
Leaving the Indian cricket team behind, the above pic is in front of the Katoomba falls reserve. Not that great but since its situated right in that extraordinary place, the whole setting makes it simply a brilliant sight to experience.
Praveen and I in the rain again which was as predictable as the term mate in Australia !!!
The above pic was taken near the lookout dedicated to one of the English kings/princes.Dont remember who it was. The funda is that the entire set is a huge stretch of lovely scenery and guess it spans over 10s of kms. We thought we would walk through from one place to another coz' its such an awe inspiring sight.

This final pic was at the end of the day. Back at the Katumba station where it was crazily cold. But thankfully it wasn't raining. Just befor ecoming here, we had been to Leura village where we had some excellent food. We had Veg rolls, Veg Samosas and Veg Lasagne with coffee and tea. What do you find common here ? Yep, you got it !!! The word Veg.

The conversation that just preceded this was funny coz' we were not able to find decent Veg food anywhere around and when we found this place ,called the Gourmet, the conversation between the person taking the order and Praveen was thus : Does this have meat ? No . Does this have chicken ? No . Is this made of beef oil ? No . We look at each other ! Then tell her, Please bring it !! She was finally relieved that the interrogation was over and she was obviously happy coz' we gave her very very good business !!!

We all felt that people staying in this part of Australia are very lucky and blessed to be more precise coz' the place is wonderful to stay !!! And will surely add to their lifeline just coz' of the lovely environment.

As we came back in the train , the tiredness got to all of us and we were pretty much flat ! Now,I am also pretty tired to write all this . So this is it. Adieu till the next time !

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Bondi it is . part 1


I had been to this world famous Bondi Beach yesterday with my teacher's friend and his colleague. It was awesome - what with the beach being so huge and coastline filled with white sand and so many lovely birds around. It makes for an absolutely lovely sight. As usual , the following are some of the pics at Bondi beach.
The pic above is of me !!! Uglier than ever ! + equally scary :-)

The pic below is one I was really happy to take. So many lovely birds and I was fortunate to catch all of them just beginning to fly.








The next 2 pics again are taken out there in Bondi which is like any other beach ,a big tourist attraction.

The final pic offers a good background view of Bondi . By the way Bondi to be pronounced as Bon dye and not BonD and definitely not as Bond !!

part 2 coming up.

Bondi it is . part 2

These are the next set of pics .The bondi beach in all its beauty and grace.

From right : Nithyanand, Kiran and me ! The caps that the other 2 folks are wearing were given out during the 75th year birthday celebration of the Sydney Harbour bridge.

This is again a pic taken in the background of the rocks and the water.
One more !
These are the set of clouds that are hanging above Bondi when we were about to leave. This weekend was dedicated to Bondi beach and hence , will be called the Bondi weekend .