Museums

I forgot to mention yesterday that on the way to meet Dad, a group of about 6 college students stopped us and asked me if I would be in a little film for them. It was an orientation film for Sydney International College (or something to that effect). They got me to be a member of the police aerobics class. All we did was shoot our make-believe guns, put our hands up, and eat a make-believe doughnut for 4x4 counts each. I don't think their video will be very good or funny... just incredibly dumb if that is the kind of stuff that's gonna be on it, but I had a wonderful time.

So anyway, today we attempted to have a museum day. First, we walked toward the Government House in the Botanical Gardens but on the way we walked past the library of New South Wales that had an exhibition on called "On the Run: Daring Convict Escapes." It's pretty self-explanatory... It was very interesting and the library was this really cool old building with 3 storeys of shelves and little walkways along each of them (like a library from the movies). So after that we continued on our way to the government house only to discover that it was closed. Mom and I wanted to go on a tour of the Opera House but Dad thought it would be silly and went to the Museum of Sydney for the Harbour Bridge exhibition. The Opera House tour was amazing! It's my favourite thing so far and I highly recommend it to anyone. The Opera House has 5 theatres. The Concert Hall and Opera Hall are on top and the Drama Hall, Studio and something else I can't remember are on the bottom. We got to go inside the concert hall and the drama hall. The concert hall seats over 2600 people and has the largest pipe organ in the world (12000 pipes, is worth well over 1 million dollars and took 10 years to build). I could go on forever about this building... it is truly amazing.

After the Opera House we were going to meet up with Dad and go to the Police and Justice museum to see an exhibition of convict portraits but, it was closed too. So we went for a delicious lunch (food here is fantastic!) and decided to go to the Hyde Park Barracks Museum. There we learned all about the history of convictism (that's a real word, they used it at the museum). It was a great supplement to what we had already seen at the library. By the time we had finished there, the blustery day had turned into a rainy, thundering evening so we hopped on the nearest train back to the hotel. After supper at a quiant Aussie restaurant Dad thought it would be a good idea to explore King's Cross. I have never seen so many strip clubs and kink shops in my entire life as I did in those 10 mins. As an illustration, walking out of the King's Cross train station you will walk past a fetish shop, followed by a restaurant called Thai Me Up, followed by a strip club. Classy classy neighbourhood.