Day 19: Jurassic World and more…
Today we got a good taste of the Sydney public transportation system. Yesterday we did the ferry, today we did the metro, the train and the bus. We had tickets to a Jurassic World Exhibition at Olympic Park where the 2000 Summer Olympics were held. The has undergone a significant amount of development work since then to support its conversion to a multipurpose facility with a number of businesses re-locating to the area.
The Jurassic World Exhibition is billed as “the closest you’ll ever come to live dinosaurs”. The design and animatronics were well done, but it was definitely tailored to a younger audience. It only took us about 45 minutes to go through it, but about 90 minutes to actually get there. So not really the biggest bang for our buck. After we finished we head back toward the train station and grabbed lunch at a local eatery called “The Plate Cafe”. It had great reviews on Google so we decided to give it a try. We all thoroughly enjoyed our meals. Jimm had the KFC, a Korean style Fried Chicken burger lettuce, coleslow almond flakes, tomato with house made Gochujang sauce. Steve and Christina shared their signature Miso Pumpkin sandwich with charred kale, feta cheese, tomato aioli with house made onion relish. I had their Chicken & Sun Dried Tomato sandwich. Highly recommend this place if you are ever in the area.
After lunch we headed to the Sydney Tower. I wanted to be able to check another tower off my list. Compared to Auckland’s Sky Tower, Sydney Tower’s main observation deck is 98 feet higher, however Auckland’s Tower is actually taller. It was a beautiful view and we were able to locate our VRBO apartment from the tower and got a great bird’s eye view of the city. We concluded our tour and then did some shopping at Victoria Shopping Center. So many similar brands to what we see at home, so we didn’t buy anything.
Finally we headed back to our VRBO and the girls took advance of the hot tub and sauna while the guys headed out for drinks and seafood. It was a pretty chill evening after a busy day traveling around city local style.