March 3 - Well at least it is in Sydney

"Wake up," said the mind.
"Bite me," said the body.

Ok, that's the end of the PG part of the blog. The rest will be G-Rated. So I woke up with a sore left knee. I'd definitely overdone it yesterday but the strange thing was that it was my left knee. It was my right knee that had the history of arthritis and had given me trouble. I didn't understand. The right knee was fine and dandy. The left knee hurt a bunch. I mentioned it to my traveling buddy, Jay, and he said that it's one of those northern - southern hemisphere idiosyncracies. The pain and discomfort you feel in the northern hemisphere switches to the opposite side of your body when you move to the southern hemisphere. Huh. Never had heard that one. Guess he learned that at college. I'm just glad I'm not at the equator. 'nuf of the discussion on my infirmities; I'll save that for another blog.

Headed out to the Haymarket area and toward Darling Harbour in the morning. Spent a bit of time in Paddy's market hoping to find breakfast. Maybe we didn't try hard enough (guess we needed a woman with us to ask for directions). Paddy's is a jumbo-sized, permanent flea market kinda place. Rows and rows of booths selling everything from t-shirts, stuffed animals, wigs, souvenirs, shoes, bras and Frederick's of Hollywood knockoffs. We quickly abandoned the place and headed to Darling Harbour, a highly commercial, upscale area with several 5 star hotels (bet they have ice buckets) bordering the water. Found breakfast at a coffee shop...Wandered about in the heat...was in the 80's by 10:30 am...and decided to duck into the Star City casino to try some air conditioning. Found out we needed to check our bags and hats (nobody takes my Tilly) in order togo in. Opted instead for a piece of shade before heading back through a farmer's market much like that in SF and onto the Aquarium.

The Aquarium was really quite nice. Probably not as good as teh Monterey Bay Aquarium but still nice. One part that was pretty cool was the large tanks -- one for seals and one for sharks and rays -- that each had underwater acrylic "tubes" that you walked through to allow the up close and personal view of the specimens. Overall it was pretty cool. Afterwards we headed back to the hotel to rest the feet and knees.