I thought it was one of those tricks

 With it being the first Saturday that we didn’t have anything planned in the morning, we thought we would take it nice and slow. We did, however, have a jam packed afternoon and night, so that may be why the morning was a little more relaxed. Lauren just can’t get enough of the French toast, because it seems she asks for that every morning now! But I don’t mind making it for her since she does like it so much. Once we gobbled down our French toast we had to get ready for our day, since our first of many stops was at the Sydney Train Expo that was going on at Central Station. We were pretty excited to see the old steam engines at Central because Lauren and I have never seen a steam engine train up close and personal! Once we made our way down to Central Station, we actually didn’t know where to go, so we ended up going into the train station, when the expo was outside the train station, who would have guessed? We finally made it to the expo where we first encountered the NSW Railway Band, who was playing a number of classic hits! Well, at least we thought they were classic because we didn’t know any of them! 

We soon had enough of the band only because we really wanted to see what these trains were all about! As we rounded the first corner, we were hit with a cloud of steam from the first train which also had a very bad taste to it! We managed to climb aboard the train and get an insider’s view of what it’s like to control a train. Actually, there was a guide there to explain all of how the train operates! He showed us the coals that fueled the train, which were extremely hot since we were starting to sweat from just standing there.

Me tooting the horn!

He then explained how the engine worked and how the steam moves the pistons to make the train move. We never thought that a steam engine train was easy to operate, but who are we kidding, he only gave us the brief ‘How to” on the train. At the end of our mini tour, he let me toot the horn, which I found more than enjoyable. Lauren on the other hand didn’t want to toot the train’s horn and I don’t know why! We moved on to explore the other trains at the expo, with some being the old timey one that were made with a wooden cabin!

Obviously the seats were a lot comfier back then!

The narrow walkways where only one person fits through!

We moved on to the last train in the line and at this one, you could sit in the locomotive with all of the controls! We had a couple of people in front of us, one being a small boy and the other being a baby girl. The boy looked like he had the time of his life sitting in the chair, but the girl on the other hand, you couldn’t even get her to sit down before she started crying! It’s safe to say that she will never play with trains again!

Once we had seen all of the trains, we decided to move on to our next stop of the day – The Sydney Eye Tower. We had bought our passes exactly one month ago and today was the last day that we could use them. The pass actually said “use before 08/06/2013” and with it being the 8^th of June, we were hoping that we could still use them! Lauren has wanted to see the sunset from the top, but the last couple of days in Sydney have been extremely cloudy, so we had our fingers crossed! We actually had about three hours to kill, so we decided that we would walk around the shopping centers right below the eye tower until it was time. Upon arrival, there was a guitarist playing music. We thought he was just another musician playing for money (which he was), but he had a huge crowd which we had never seen before. We walked over to see what he was playing, and surprisingly he was playing international acoustic (I guess that’s music from around the world). He had songs from South America, Turkey, Africa and any place you could think of! He was really good, which it showed since he made over 200 dollars in CD sales in the first 20 minutes we watched. His act ended shortly so we headed to the shops to see what we could find. The first store we stopped at was a Myers, which was kind of like our Belk, but much more expensive. Apparently they were having a sale going on, but when we looked on the price tag to see that shoes were marked down from $250 to $200 dollars, we quickly rushed out of there because that was way out of our price range! The next store called JayJays was a lot better since they had signs all over the store saying “nothing over $25!” Although the prices were cheap, we didn’t find anything except for some American Flag Wayfarers, which I wanted Lauren to get because she looked awesome in them; Lauren thought differently. With our stomachs starting to rumble, we headed off to the local Hungry Jacks (Australian version of Burger King) to see if it really tasted like an American burger. We ended up getting the BBQ cheese burger which was more than delicious. We made a pact to come back to Hungry Jacks for their $5 Tuesday deal which consisted of a burger, fries, drink, and an ice-cream sundae. Once we finished our burgers, we headed back to the Sydney Eye to try and catch the sunset. On the way to the eye, we found another street performer who was pretty skilled in drumming. We ended up being late to the Sydney Eye, but it was worth it!

After we stayed for five minutes, we decided that the Sydney Eye tower was a little more important than a drummer. We made our way to the eye to find out that we had to go to the fifth floor of the mall just to take an elevator to the top (slightly confusing). We finally made it and they presented us with 3D glasses to see a 4D movie! It was really cool because the audience was flying through the air and wind was actually blowing in our faces! Once the movie ended we were finally able to take the elevator up to the top of the eye, which is 1014 feet in the air!  We stepped out to see the Sydney skyline lit up with lights! Although we didn’t get to see the sunset, I think this was a great alternative.

It went from light to dark in literally five minutes!

St. Mary's Cathedral from the sky!

We stayed up there for quite some time just enjoying the view while talking up a storm. We sadly had to end our stay since it was starting to get late plus we hadn’t had dinner yet. We were also planning on going to see the water show, but since our hunger took over, we decided to just head back for some spaghetti! Good thing we did so because on the way back, I got lucky and found $50 dollars just sitting on the ground! I have been getting pretty lucky lately, but I think it’s just good karma! We talked about what we wanted to spend it on, but never came to a conclusion. Lauren was pretty shocked and was almost crying it seemed! She said it felt like she won the lottery, which was pretty cute. Once we arrived back we made our spaghetti and enjoyed the rest of our night relaxing.