16 July
It is my 59th birthday today. We awoke to a day of invitingly decent weather. The plan had been to go to services at the same synagogue we went to last night, but last night's experience wasn't appealing enough for us to want to repeat it this morning. We just didn't feel a connection with that congregation. There is another synagogue near it that was recommended, but we couldn't muster up enough interest in trying it out this fine day. Instead, we studied the literature we'd collected on Sydney and formulated a sightseeing plan. Razelle pointed out that going to the zoo would require a ferry ride. I doubted that that was absolutely true. There must be a way to drive there. I programmed the GPS to set a course and, sure enough, the GPS found a way for us to get there without tolls or ferries. Our caravan park is on the south side of Sydney and the zoo is on the north side, so the distance this course traversed didn't surprise me.
We drove through the adjacent neighborhoods then entered a motorway. This soon ducked underground and we were speeding along in a long tunnel where the GPS signal couldn't reach us. The same thing happened the day before and we missed our subterranean exit because the GPS hadn't indicated our real-time position. I was afraid we were in for a repeat of this, but we popped up soon enough and continued driving along in sunlight. Then we were routed off the motorway (a toll section laid ahead) and onto city streets to join the crowd of weekend drivers. We soon found ourselves once again making slow progress, making all kinds of lane changes and maneuvers, shifting through the entire range of gears (I was so thankful to have mastered third gear by this time) and stopping at countless red lights. It was the scenic route. Razelle and I got to see how people lived, where they shopped, how well they did or didn't keep up their homes, etc. We also got to see how they treated their fellow motorists – not so courteously, I'm afraid to say.
We crawled along one street that stands out in our minds, historic King Street, with storefronts that have maintained their period architecture, behind which were all manner of boutique restaurants and businesses with the catchiest, most creative names you could imagine. There is a movie theatre on this street. Because it is my birthday, Razelle suggested we return here later in the day to find a good restaurant and catch a movie as a way of celebrating it.
We were directed back onto the motorway and then onto the famous bridge over Sydney Harbour. This bridge and the opera house beside it are THE iconic landmarks of Sydney. I could see the tips of the opera house "sails" from my driver's seat as we crossed the bridge, but Razelle couldn't make them out from her side of the caravan.
Crossing this bridge put us on the side of Sydney where the zoo is. We still had more neighborhoods to slowly traverse before we parked by the zoo, and we passed more boutique establishments in these neighborhoods as well. One had the catchy name "Pasta Zu." I joked that we had to drive "past ta zoo" to find this place. We were caught behind slowly advancing traffic and watched a bird as it walked past us on the pavement going in our direction. I pointed out to Razelle that this bird was going to the zoo faster walking than we were driving. We laughed at these witticisms and images to pass the time. What else could we do?
Our day at the zoo was quite rewarding. First we merited a concession (discount) for Razelle's disability; then we were offered the last wheelchair they had, at no extra charge. They gave out free newspapers so Razelle had something to read anytime we were separated by unequal interests in an exhibit (I was often more interested than she). Everywhere we went was wheelchair accessible, but some sections were very steep. The zoo is generally arranged so that the Australian animals I had hoped to see were concentrated in one region of it. We could skip the other standard zoo beasts (elephants, large cats, primates) we had often seen at other zoos.
We got to see Tasmanian devils sleeping and koala bears posing, wallabies lounging and platypuses paddling.
The nocturnal animal exhibit even had a male and female zookeeper in it placing food there (I quipped to Razelle that I wondered if they were a mating pair). After seeing these denizens of the dark in an active state, I understood better what had been dodging our caravan as we traversed this continent after sundown.
From various key locations in the zoo you can see the entire harbor. The view of Sydney across the water takes your breath away. The skyline, the opera house and the harbor bridge can all be taken in with one photograph. We took that photograph, taking turns posing in it. 
At the end of our visit to the zoo we returned the wheelchair and did a single round trip loop on the overhead cable car.
As we left the zoo, I mentioned to the information staff that Razelle had seen a honeyeater at the NationalBotanical Gardens in Canberra. This is a very rare indigenous bird species; they are trying to breed them at the zoo and return them to the wild. They asked at the honeyeater exhibit, "Have you seen this bird? Please let us know!" Razelle's sighting of one made them very excited. We got a lot of pleasure out of today's visit to the zoo, and we gave them some in return.
We drove through the streets of Sydney in the dark as a light rain fell. The driving conditions were no more amenable than before and King Street had no parking spots due to all the other people who pre-empted us for their Saturday night on the town. We had had enough of competing with the citizens of Sydney for road space and parking space. We returned to our caravan park without celebrating my birthday in the conventional way. We pulled into our powered site to find that the creepy guy was still there and no less creepy than before. We cooked up a great batch of rice and tuna in mushroom sauce. My mother used to make this dish as we were growing up. It has always been one of my favorite dishes.
So I had rice and tuna for my birthday with Razelle and we enjoyed it together more than eating out in town.
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