Sydney weekend

For our last weekend in Sydney we did some packing and paperwork (did I mention we are busy buying a new car, setting up cable, groceries and other details of life back home) and a little bit of revisiting favorite spots. On Saturday we walked up to the Balmain Market. Brian and I purchased a painting by a local artist named Phillip Suping Xu. After eyeing his work for months we decided this portrait of Balmain from Mort Bay would make a great addition to our dining room back home. We stopped next door for lunch at Our Place on Darling so all four of us went home happy at the end of the day.

On Saturday night Brian and I left the girls with a babysitter and headed out for a long, chatty dinner with our friends Anna and Glenn. We went just down the road to a little restaurant called Quattro Paste. I'll really miss having so many excellent pubs, restaurants, shops and cafes so close to us. 

On Sunday we woke to hazy smoke filled skies over otherwise sunny Sydney. Brian and I scoured the Internet looking for mentions of bush fires but found nothing of note. Finally at the zoo an employee explained that the smoke came from controlled burns that aimed to prevent larger fires from breaking out later. 

We strolled through the zoo taking in all the Aussie animals we could find. Here are the girls with a koala.

We found ourselves surprisingly taken by this industrious little echidna. 

We saw the lion up close.

We got a little goofy with the monkey statues.

We watched the Seal Show again. It never fails to amuse.

We got a last glimpse at Australia/New Zealand's own Little Penguins. I'm told these can even be found in Sydney Harbour. We got a quick glimpse of these in Doubtful Sound in New Zealand. I also love knowing they exist in Sydney Harbour - along with the sharks, of course. I heard on a recent Australian Geographic TV special that there are more different species of fish in Sydney Harbour than in all of the Mediterranean. 

On the ride back home I couldn't take my eyes off the water. It was hard to watch the sun set on our last weekend in the country. Four sleeps until we head home.