Sunday, May 27, 2001.
After two nights trying to sleep in aircraft, a night in a real bed is a luxury, and although we woke up late, we woke up pretty darn content. After a fantastic shower (one of the best in any hotel anywhere, EVER), we headed down to the Sunday buffet breakfast (which was the antithesis of the shower). Afterward, we took a quick peek around the hotel and conference space - both Ken and Brian were doing pre-conference sessions.
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| From the conference area, looking at the staircase down to the lobby. | A look down at the entrance way to the lobby, notice the two huge columns. | |
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| Ken poses during the pre-conference session. | Brian stays focused during the photo, working on a demonstration. | |
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Truman and Stalin? Not quite. Outside the session rooms, we bump into Mitch and Erik. Mitch (on the left) owns Informant Communications (who put on the conference) and Erik (on the right) is the "speaker wrangler" and content planner for Informant. |
With that, we headed off to explore Sydney itself. After looking through the various guidebooks (unfortunately, there's no Eyewitness book, like the one we had in Istanbul), we decided to visit the Darling Harbour area of Sydney, where the Aquarium and Maritime Museum are. Both were just a short walk from the hotel.
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| Walking from the hotel to Darling Harbour, we pass this impressive structure - Parliament buildings? Law Courts? Nope, just a shopping mall. | But down the street is the clock tower of the Town Hall and Mayor's Office. | |
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| On the Darling Harbour footbridge, we can see the Aquarium over the monorail track. | Looking the other way, we can see another shopping complex on the other side of the bridge. |
The Sydney Aquarium is comparable size to the Vancouver Aquarium - no whales, though (yes, I know the orcas are gone, but there's still the belugas). Of course, the exhibits are Australian-centric, so there's lots of things we've never seen before.
From the aquarium, we walked back to the Darling Harbour bridge and went across it, toward the Maritime Museum and its floating exhibits - the Vampire and Onslow.
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| Looking up at the Darling Harbour bridge (and monorail) from the Aquarium. The Maritime Museum is on the other side of the bridge. | As we cross the bridge, we get a good look at the Vampire (the ship) and the Onslow (the submarine). | |
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| Looking back over the bridge, the city of Sydney is behind Stacy, with the aquarium on the left and the monorail on the right. | A floating restaurant beside the bridge. | |
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The entrance to the Maritime Museum as we come down off the bridge. |
The Maritime Museum is actually made up of a number of parts. There are the two floating exhibits, the Vampire and the Onslow. There's the museum itself, plus a building called Wharf 7 and the James Craig, a wooden sailing bark. We couldn't see everything, there just wasn't enough time, so we started with the Vampire and Onslow, managing to get through the main museum before finally heading back to the hotel.
We arrived at the hotel in time for a quick shower (awesome!) and change before the speaker dinner.
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| Tom, Peter and Jan interrupt their visit to mug for the camera. | Stacy and Jan compare notes on how crazy their husbands are. | |
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| The dining room where the speaker dinner was served. | Jan and Peter sitting at dinner. | |
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| After dinner, Adam and Richard review some XML code for Adam's session the next day. | Long after dinner, after much debate and generally loud discussion, Adam, Richard and Brian are the last to leave the dining room - Brian fully equipped for further debauchery that evening. |
It was Adam, Richard and Brian that got caught up in a long debate on the evolution of technology and other such esoteric geek subjects, drinking beer and wine until there wasn't anymore to be had. But we didn't last too long - still lagged and having to present sessions the next day at the conference, we were all in bed before midnight. The next day would be the first real conference day.