Happy Boxing Day!

Guys, a Christmas Miracle occurred – I slept on the plane!

It wasn’t great sleep, but the kind where you dip in and out of consciousness, but still! After being startled awake at one point I decided to check the flight status. To my surprise, there was just over 4 hours left, which meant I had been dozing for ten hours!

I can hardly believe it.

In any case, it means I haven’t had much jet lag so far. It was a bit hard to get up this morning (it’s 8:30 am now) and the jet lag mixed with the swaying docks we were in yesterday in unpleasant ways, but I stayed up until 10 last night with minimal problems.

So! We’re in Sydney! It’s gorgeous here – clear skies, lots of sun, 80+ degrees. After meeting up at the Airbnb flat we rented in Surry Hills, Jason and I FaceTimed with Justin and then I took a glorious shower to feel human again.

Jason anticipated the holiday and picked up some basic groceries the day before, so we had some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before hopping in an Uber to go to the zoo.

Yes, the zoo! Which was open, strangely, and which was a bunch of fun. We took a ferry across the harbor to the Taronga Zoo.

The zoo is built on a hill and the ferry drops you off right at the base. We caught the Sky Ride up to the entrance at the top, looking out our little plastic capsule at the elephants as the toddler in there with us (with his parents) chattered at us excitedly about flying foxes and taking showers.

We had about two hours before the zoo would close, so we grabbed maps and worked our way back down the hill. It was really fun! They had great birds of all sorts:

And there’s very little distance between us and the animals. There was even an ‘Australian Walkabout’ section with no barriers whatsoever between us and the wallabies and emus.

There were koalas there too, but they were all napping snug in the trees above us. Still freakin’ adorable, though.

So cute!

We also met a billabong, a binturong, and a fishing cat:

There were all kinds of adorable animals in the nocturnal section, including hopping mice, echidnas, owls, and a platypus; but they were not great for photos given the low lighting.

The sadness of the day was the absence of the Pygmy hippos. Still, the adorableness of the koalas go a long way to make up for it.