Space, the Final Frontier

[2009_09_05]
My day started off with coming across this funny looking car. Goofy looking isn't it? Speaking of cars and traffic, Sydney has many dedicated bicycle lanes through the city. Along with them is dedicated stop and go signals for bicycles. I had never seen these type before. Here's a picture.


Since my Start Trek event at the Sydney Opera House wasn't to start until 1:30pm, I decided to walk down to Darling Harbour. Its not too far from Circular Quay so I decided to walk there. (See the top panorama of this post). Its a newer touristy port on the harbour. There is a wild life park, an Aquarium, the National Maritime Museum, the worlds largest IMAX, and a host of other things as well. It seems to be a happening place. I just stopped to get some brekkie (Australian slang for breakfast). After that I decided to take a detour on the way through the Sydney Opera House by way of the Royal Botanical Gardens. On the way there I got a glimpse of the Sydney Observation Tower as well as some cool buildings near Hyde park.


Soon after I made it to the Botanical Gardens. I took some photos of some interesting things. First thing I really came across was this glass pyramid. Its their tropical rain-forest building. I thought it looked neat, for some reason it reminded me of Jurassic Park, not entirely sure why. I was also fascinated by the far out trees they had. There was an incredibly tall palm tree and a tall and narrow pine tree that stood out. Very neat. They also has several just plain massive old trees. These trees are quite strange though, zoom in on the panorama below and look at the trunk. See how it looks like a bunch of extra trunks are sort of melting from the branches and starting new trunks? That's whats going on. This tree starts growing on another tree, it drops down roots and starts growing a trunk. It slowly envelops the original tree, growing right over it. It keeps dropping new roots and new trunks form. It takes quite a long time but is very interesting.



Of course one has to take colorful photos of flowers...


Ah, the time has come to make it to the Opera House for the show. I had some time to take a few photos outside but cameras were not allowed in the opera house itself. It was great to see people from all sorts of walks of life come together to this event. Quite a wide spread of the classes, ages, stereotypes, etc. I was quickly seated. The inside is awesome, very well designed. The acoustics were fantastic. I could close my eyes and just take in the music. Phenomenal. The first third of the performance was space songs (but not Start Trek). Songs like 2001 a space Odyssey, etc. After half a dozen of those songs we went to intermission. Lots of wine was served. But before I knew it an intercom came on telling all of use to board the Enterprise as it was disembarking the station in a few minutes. Time for the real show to begin! For this portion the conductor came out in a Captain Kirk uniform. He was witty and intermixed a lot of Star Trek humor between songs. They played music from each of the 11 movies and played movies clips on a big screen. The quality of the music was amazing. It just resonated. I already enjoy the music but to hear it played in an orchestral hall by a symphony was jaw dropping. I'm very glad I was able to do this!


After the show I walked through the botanical gardens again. I then went back to Darling Harbour. I had supper on a floating ship in the harbor, one of the 11 landmarks of Sydney... It was a great meal. I had Kangaroo, it was quite tasty!
After dinner, I walked a round a bit, I walked past the maritime museum and got to see their replica of the Endeavor lit up at night. It looked fabulous. Hopefully I'll get time to visit that museum but there's so much to see and do and such little weekend time!


One last quirk of the day, check out this escalator. It has wooden steps and the spacing between the up and down escalator is also wood. It seems to have been installed in the 50s or 60s. I've never seen wooden ones before!