Sydney Fish Market

KB and I started day 3 at the Sydney Fish Market. The bus journey from Swissotel was about 5 to 10 minutes, but it costed AUD 2.30 per adult ticket. Thankfully, this is in our itinerary on a weekend and thus we avoided having to buy pre-paid tickets, which are only accepted on the buses on weekday 7am to 7pm.

True to what my friend had warned me, there's a lot of birds dining with you outdoors!

Prawn sashimi!

Blue swimmer crab

Big salmon slices

Raw oysters in their clams

Lobster platter

Cheese

I regret big time that we came here after a full breakfast at the hotel. These lobsters look so yummy!

At the Fish Market Light Rail station

From the Fish Market, we traveled to our next destination at Pyrmont Bay on light rail. We spent AUD 4.60 per adult ticket and traveled 3 stations. The payment was the old-fashion way, where there's a bus conductor on board and he will go to each passenger to sell the tickets. Then I thought: we're only traveling 3 stops, if we were to board the last cabin, by the time he reaches us, we would have gotten off the light rail already.

Manly SEA LIFE Sanctuary

If not for the combo pass, we probably wouldn't have bothered to go to Manly SEA LIFE Sanctuary, mainly because it is not in the city itself. To get there, we have to take a 30-minute ferry ride (AUD 7.40 per adult ticket).

Arriving at Manly Wharf

View of the wharf from the beach

Manly SEA LIFE Sanctuary is a short walk along the coast from the wharf. This attraction isn't a big place and there was hardly any visitor when we were there.

Fish tank at the entrance

Small stingray

Small jellyfish

Seahorse

Big stingray

At the Shark Harbour, visitors walk through a tunnel and watch the marine life swimming across the glass ceiling.

The Penguin Cove is on the second floor of the building.

Two little penguins

Don't make too much noise here!

Sydney Opera House

Sydney Opera House is a must-see attraction for me. Before buying the guide tour tickets, I need to decide the exact time that I want to plan this into our itinerary. So, I thought it'll be best to put it as the first place to go for the day. Ideally, I wanted to take the Explorer Bus there, because the stop is just outside the attraction. However, it doesn't take the shortest route there from our hotel. Before arriving at Sydney, we were not aware of the free city shuttle (see route map). But we soon realize their existence and we took the free shuttle bus from the bus stop at Queen Victoria Building, which is just opposite the road from our hotel, and drop off at Circular Quay. Then, we walked along the coast to the Opera House and enjoyed the scenery along the way.

We are almost reaching the iconic building.

View of Sydney Habour Bridge from the Sydney Opera House.

A lot of seagulls waiting for leftover food!

In the guided tour, we learnt about its architectural design and visited some of the theaters and studios. In order to make sure that everyone can hear the guide, we were given headphones. Photography is not allowed inside the theaters and studios.

Our next destination is the Manly SEA LIFE Sanctuary. To get there, we have to take a ferry from Circular Quay and the journey offered a great view of Sydney Opera House from the sea.

Sydney Tower Eye

KB's friend recommended that we buy the attraction ticket online before we fly to Sydney, we bought the combo pass for 5 attractions online for AUD 63. If you were to buy the tickets over the counter, the combo would cost AUD 99... buy them individually online would be AUD 170 and buy them individually over the counter would be AUD 189! The combo pass can be bought at any of the 5 attraction's website. Anyway, I chose to buy from Sydney Tower Eye beside it is next to our hotel and I'm pretty sure that we'll go there on our first evening at Sydney.

Greedy me wants to see both the day and night view, so I checked the sunset time and made sure we get there slightly before that time. After the official sunset time, we had to wait for more than 40 minutes for the sky to go totally dark.

Looking east

Looking south

Looking west

Street lights lighted up

Looking north

Trick Eye Museum

I went to the Trick Eye Museum with a few of my colleagues this afternoon! We heard about the crazy long queue when it first open, because of the 50% discounted tickets during the opening season. We have missed that discount and picked a weekday afternoon (and took leave) to go.



This is the actual upright view of this art piece. The red "floor" of the painting is actually the wall. One can lie on the floor with the head on the right, legs on the left and the hands stretching up. Take a photo, rotate the photo 90 degrees clockwise and you look as though you are doing a handstand.

Would you like a ride on the Merlion?

Or maybe you'd like to fly around the town on a broom? The broom appears to be floating in mid air, but it is drilled to the wall. I angled this shot to hide the metal support between the broom and the wall.



In January, KB and I went to Korea and visited the Bucket List 3D Art in Jeju. The one that we went to in Jeju has a collection of 2D paintings on walls and floors that look 3-dimensional. However, this collection we visited today has many art pieces that consist of physical objects. These objects are not part of the 2D paintings on the wall; they are actual objects. The art pieces are mostly different in Jeju and in Singapore.

As mentioned by Little Day Out, the art pieces are really close to each other. On top of this, there are so many people in the museum, making it difficult to take photos and people often bump into another each other. Initially, I was thinking of bring along a tripod so that we could take group photo. In the end, I forgot about it this morning. Anyway, it wouldn't be useful... someone might just knocking into it while we are posing for a shot. However, we still manage to take group photos, by asking other visitors or the helpful staffs would volunteer their service when they happen to be nearby. We spent 2 hours in there and had a lot of fun taking photos of different poses with the art pieces. A tip from me: be careful when getting on and off the art pieces, the edges are getting quite rough.