Day 13: Sydney. Robbin and Dan arrive

Lots of walking today, thru the fish market, marine museum, over to botanical garden, dinner at home. Robbin and Dan arrived mid-morning and we got to catch up and have the day together. 

Fish market has huge selection of fresh seafood. Also many booths to buy seafood meals. They are not shy about prices! 

Part of the sticker shock is that prices are in AUS$, which trades about 130 to 100 USD. And everything is marked in kilos, not pounds. Both conspire to make normal prices look 3X as high to Americans. 

These king crabs are about a foot across! 

On the bridge over to downtown Sydney. We're here! 

Mu-sea-um, get it? 

In addition to indoor exhibits they have a schooner, destroyer, old tall ship and other ships to tour.

We meet up with Robbin and Dan to have Thai lunch in the neighborhood. 

After lunch we hit the maritime museum, complete with welcoming blue jellyfish. 

There is a lot of land acknowledgement here. Great to see. USA could do much more of this. 

We go to the underwater photography and James Cameron exhibits. He got his start as an under water inventor with an erector set bathysphere at age 14 -- the mouse survived. Followed his interest in sci-fi to become a movie director, then used the movies (Avatar etc, Titanic) and love of underses exploration to develop tech and ultimately go to bottom of Mariana trench. 

Early bathyspheres.

The undersea explorer that got him to bottom of Mariana trench.

Model of Titanic used for filming. 

Very large "first order" Fresnel lens from Sydney harbor. 

Mike shows us how he assembles ships in a bottle. There were many (six) doing this in Sydney when he started 37 years ago, now there is only him. 

Gorgeous to be here. We should look for the Southern Cross in the sky when it clears. 

Friends on tour. Check out the rope imprinted concrete panels on the wall. I really thought they were rope, not concrete. 

Australian ibis.

All the palms in the palm section of botanical gardens. 

Another Moreton Bay Fig tree, this one in Sydney. Check out those roots and buttresses. 

At the end of the day we are hanging out in our sterile-looking apartment when Kathy spies a cockroach. Just a wee little critter, but that's the straw that breaks the camel's back. We cancel our Airbnb and find another place a little farther from downtown.

The Host is not a decorative genius.