Australia: Flicking Out, Beaches, etc.

I forgot to mention it, but Monday night after our Blue Mountains tour, we flicked out. While walking back to our hotel, we passed a cinema and went in and saw "Jumper." Not sure we liked it - it certainly didn't live up to the hype. Expensive ticket prices, too! $16 ASD each - that's about $15 USD each! At least that got us assigned seats. I've been to movies in the U.K., Japan, Korea and New Zealand, and in each of those countries they assign seats - I have never seen that at a U.S. movie theater. And we had the option of seeing the movie in their "gold class" theater, which would have given us larger recliner seats and in-theater food service (servers in the theater - but you still have to pay for the food). We figured that wasn't worth the $30 ASD they charge, so we got the "cheap" seats!

Meanwhile, on with the summary...

Tuesday, March 4th:

• Bondi Beach. Lots of people told us we MUST visit two beaches here in Sydney, and we hit the first one Tuesday. Bondi Beach really was quite pretty (pictured herein), and the water was very warm and clear. This did make us realize how much we took the beach for granted when we lived in SoCal - Bondi Beach seemed no more cool than some of our old stomping grounds like Corona Del Mar, Laguna Beach, and so on.
• Sydney Wildlife World. Right next door to the Aquarium we visited earlier this week is Sydney Wildlife World, a quaint little zoo featuring a lot of animals that are native to Australia. It was cool, but honestly I think the smaller, less-publicized Featherdale Park we saw on Monday was cooler. Check out the way cute Koala, though.
• We're Gonna Go Batty!!! Last night while we were walking back to our hotel, we happened to glance up and see HUNDREDS of bats flying above the city!!! I had heard rumors of these, but hadn't noticed previously. Fortunately they tend to stay up really high so you never really notice them unless you're looking for them. But even so... they're kinda creapy!!!

Wednesday, March 5th:

• Taronga Zoo. We took the ferry (ferries are great here!!!) over to the other side of Sydney Harbor, to Taronga Zoo. This has got to be the coolest zoo I've ever been to! It's huge, and very diverse. Here is one of my favorite pictures - a picture of two giraffes with the Sydney skyline in the background. They also had the CUTEST meerkats there!!! I've posted these cute little guys on our Flickr site, so go have a look. I guarantee you'll go "Awwwww..."
• Temple. It was very nice to visit the Sydney Temple of our church Wednesday evening. A nice, peaceful contrast to the craziness we've been enjoying all week. :-)

Wow... running out of time again, so will have to put up more later. There are more pictures (up to 181 now) on the Flickr site, though, including pictures from today's visit to Manly Beach. Please click here.