Monorail Expedition! (Now Illustrated!)

Last Thursday Catie and I went on our great Monorail Expedition. We went around Sydney pretending to be tourists, talking occassionally in Terrible Accents, and generally enjoying ourselves.


First we caught the tram to Darling Harbour, which is (tragically, but excitingly) further than I've ever caught the tram before. I always enjoy the lightrail in a markedly 6-year-old sort of way. Then we bought day-passes for the monorail, so as to be able to do otherwise financially untenable things like what we did next: caught the monorail the one stop to the other side of Darling Harbour, where we got off and wandered for a while, and took photos of the Christmas tree, and us in the fountain thingy.



Then we caught the monorail from Darling harbour, where we began the official photo competition (niftiest/most artistic photo at any given site wins)

to World Square, which was an enormous hole in the ground when I last caught to monorail.


The competition continued, with photos of the sculpture there, and of the christmas decorations.

Also, we both tried on dresses, mainly because the one I tried was red, and currently my shopping life revolves around the quest for nice clothes that are Actually Red.

Heaps of stuff is coral, or magenta, or pink, and even orangey red, the problem with which is that I look awful and sallow in orangey reds. So yes, currently questing for bright red clothes. Then we wandered down some niftily dcorated arcades,

and took notes on our progress (what d'you mean "tragically nerdy"?).

Then we went to the Galleries Victoria
and competed about photos taken from a little bridgey thing,


and went to Kinokuniya (where we found out decisively that it will be completely impossible to order in the Studio Ghibli box set from any shop in Australia because it hasn't been rated (although surely it's clearly a strong PG at worst. Maybe slightly more for "supernatural themes" or, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, woud yu believe, "quirky situations"). At Catie's insistance, we went to the bathroom in the Arthouse Hotel, because she'd heard from Bec that they were outstandingly tzujy bathrooms, as indeed they were.

Then (and theeenn...) we went to Darling Park and the Aquarium in order to have icecream (an important part of any tourist day)




and watched the people in formal clothes promenading. This became an exciting game: taking photos of the formalgoers without them spotting us. Hehehe... so much dodgy fun... and lots of pretty/not pretty dresses too.



We considered getting a token cocktail, since it was now 6 ish,


and we were, according to the monorail voiceover guy, in "one of Sydney's hottest nightspots", but decided not to on account of (a) being nearly broke, and (b) thanks to the good people at the RTA, if I have 1 drink, then want to drink hours later, I can't. This being the case, we went twice around the full monorail circut, going "oooh" at the chinese gardens and so on (and having a private carriage all to ourselves by the last circuit).


Then we Trammed home, and went out to Quest for Scrubs season 2 part 2, and had burritos and Scrubs for dinner. Mmmm.... starchy.


A 4.5 star day, all in all. That elusive last 0.5 star would only have been attainable if the camera hadn't run out of batteries.

Today's trivia question: What is the name of JD and Turk's dog?