Sydney Aquarium

Sydney Aquarium held great promise for us, so much so that we expected a full afternoon's worth of entertainment, and had cut our swim in the hotel pool down to a mere few hours in anticipation.

I say swim, but I suppose that's just slightly dishonest as the water in what's technically referred to as the "lap pool" was far too cold to actually enter, so we frolicked instead in the spa pool with bubbles activated for prolonged periods of time. Very Bohemian.

The hotel was quite odd, apparently a converted woolstore. Presumably there had been a huge internal space because a huge internal space had been left with walkways punctuated by oak beams alternating with dizzying drops to the floor far below and dizzying heights to the roof far above, with the various landings receding into the distance in every direction.

Anyway the Aquarium afforded us a few hours of entertainment, but at the end of the day an Aquarium is an Aquarium and it didn't afford us too many surprises. There were two pools with glass tunnels running through them, which was one more than Mooloolaba, and the whole place didn't stink of fish, which was better than Kelly Tarlton's in Auckland.

But the real plus with a minus concealed inside was the fact that the cafe had blue plastic ponchos for sale. The plus was obvious, the minus could be split neatly into 1) the poncho was too big for Eloise and she kept standing on it and 2) everyone thought would looked like idiots and 3) they were right.