We were way early for check-in, but our room was already free, so we dumped our luggage into the room before heading off for the Taronga Zoo. We thought the hotel concierge would have some better info on whether the deals on trains/buses/ferries were worth it, but I decided it was pretty much not worth it. The two main train rides that we were taking out to the Blue Mountains were not within the area covered, so we'd have to buy them anyways. It didn't look like we'd be taking that much public transportation for it to be worth it. We also found out that a DayTripper pass was like $17 compared to the $15 we paid for the train from the airport. So it totally would have been worth it, except we found out a couple days later that trains to/from the airport aren't covered by the passes. Haha.

It was a quick walk back to the harbor (they call it the Quay over there, pronounced "key") and caught the ferry to go to the zoo. We couldn't figure out whether to get the ZooPass or not -- The ZooPass gives you 10% off the entire cost of zoo entry and the ferry roundtrip. But we had a coupon that gave us 20% off the entry to the Zoo. Of course, without knowing the cost of zoo entry, we couldn't figure out which one was the better deal, so we asked the guy at the ferry ticket counter. He told us it was about the same amount either way, plus if we buy the ZooPass, we don't have to wait in line again to pay at the zoo entrance, so we decided to get the ZooPass.

The ferry ride over was pretty great. The Quay is basically in between the Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House, so as the ferry left the dock we were basically running back and forth between the port and starboard sides getting fantastic close-up pictures of both. Once it got a little further away, then you could get pics of both the Opera House and the Sydney skyline, and then even further away, you could get the bridge in the picture as well. On the other side of the Opera House there's another small bay that held a few warships in dock. It had never occurred to me to think that Australia had their own high-tech military ships, so that was a little bit of an expanding-mind moment for me.

Once we disembarked, we had the choice to either take the Sky Safari in (like the ones that used to be in Disneyland before they took them out, probably because of lawsuits or something), or have the bus take us to the new entrance. Well, the ferry was of course super-crowded and so the line to the Sky Safari was already stretching out and besides, Patricia is scared of heights, so we hopped in the bus and rode the five minutes to the entrance. Of course, once getting there, we found out that getting the ZooPass actually costed more money (but only one or two dollars). And additionally, there was so many people with ZooPasses that there was a line that we had to wait in, and it was longer than the lines to buy an entrance ticket (one ZooPass line, three or four regular lines). There was hardly anybody in the regular lines. Oh well.

One of the primary reasons we went to the zoo was to get close to the koalas. I think it was here that we found out that it is illegal to cuddle koalas in NSW, so we would have to settle for just petting them. But we didn't want to pay for it at Taronga Zoo since we were going to other places with koalas as well, so we passed on it. For the rest of the zoo, I'll let the pictures (and captions) speak for themselves.

The ferry ride back was pretty crowded, guess everybody else was finishing up with the zoo at the same time we were, so it was a bit harder to get some pictures. Once we rested a little bit, we dressed up and walked a couple blocks down to our dinner reservation at the Summit restaurant. I'd been under the impression that it was at Sydney Tower (like the Space Needle), but instead it was at the top of some other, more low-key building. The view was still great, though, and we also later read some reviews that the food at Sydney Tower was not so good -- it was just good to be there for the view. Actually, the food at the Summit was not so great either, but it wasn't any fault of the restaurant. The day had just been totally exhausting and we were just about ready to drop. Remember that we had basically been awake at ~4:00am having breakfast on the plane, and now it was close to 9:00pm. Normally I would have ordered a dessert, but by the end of dinner we were so pooped that I just wanted to get back to our room. So the experience was probably affected by that.

Day 1 was great. Some good sightseeing and animals to watch. Not quite adjusted to the time difference yet, but that was planned because next up we had an early day...