Sydney, Day 4

Hey guys!

We took it easy our last day in Sydney. I had one last thing on my list of things I wanted to see – an art installation called Forgotten Songs, at Angel Place.

Afterwards we headed to the Australian Museum. We’d seen a big sign up for a spider exhibit there, and Paul loves spiders, so we had to go! The walk was beautiful – we passed through Hyde Park and walked past St. Mary’s Cathedral.

(If you’re a little skittish of spiders, you might want to skip ahead!)

It was a really cool exhibit! There was a station where you could pick up a coaster and a spider would appear on it on the screen:

A microscope to look at the tiny spiders:

Lots of dead spiders to look at up close:

A mama and her babies:

And several live spiders! (I love the ogre spider, the one holding its web – I remember seeing that in an episode of Magic School Bus!)

Paul’s favourite was the peacock spider. There was a place where you could dance and see how attractive female peacock spiders would find you. Unsurprisingly, Paul is a champion peacock spider dancer.

So cute!!

We stuck around for a spider milking session. The woman pulled out a female funnel spider who, despite looking absolutely terrifying when poked with the tweezers, was actually very reluctant to attack. (She looks really big on the screen, but she was actually quite small.)

Afterwards we wandered a bit throughout the rest of the museum. We saw lots of taxidermied animals (and the penguins we’d been hoping to see the day before!):

And dinosaurs!!

Afterwards, we saw some beautiful plants at the succulent garden in the Botanic Gardens. We also met up again with Rianna and Maya, who had just recently been joined by their aunt from Japan!

We wandered down again to the harbour and walked to a place called Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair. (Apparently it was hand-carved for the Governor’s wife back in 1810.)

The view from that area was beautiful.

After that we parted ways! Our flight left at 8am the next morning, so we needed to pack and go to bed early.

Thank you Sam and Kevin, for inviting us to your wonderful wedding; thank you Rianna and Maya for hanging out with us; and thank you Sydney for being such a beautiful city!

I really hope we can return someday soon!

Until the next time, Sydney! またね！