Greetings from Sydney, Australia where I’m touring the city and attending the Annual General Meeting of IATA – the International Air Transport Assocation.
While in town, I visited the Powerhouse Museum, one of the sites of the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences and, in the Space section, came across a few examples of old food from space.
This container, made by NASA, is from 1973 and was created so that astronauts on the Skylab space station could drink a lemonade in space.
According to the museum notes, this white plastic ‘concertina-shaped’ cylinder has a “brownish lemonade drink paste” inside which would be reconstituted by adding water. A velcro tab attached to the bottom of the container presumeably was used to attach the drink to a surface to keep it from floating in the cabin.
Also on display- Space food for cosmonauts from 1993:
From the museum notes:
“Inside the package are five individual food items including a tube of fermented cabbage soup (in paste/puree form), a tin of pork and potatoes, ten bite-size cubes of black bread sealed in a plastic wrap, a plastic sachet of peach and black grape juice powder and a small sachet of condiments. The juice sachet is folded over and comes fitted with a valved nozzle through which it would be rehydrated and drunk.”
Business class seat or not (and thank-you again, Qantas for the business class seat), if your journey from home to your destination take 20 hours or more you want some ‘wow’ on the ground.
And Sydney, Australia is delivering.
A hike along the sandstone cliffes from Bondi Beach to Bronte Beach, in the suburbs of the city, was “surftastic.”
And Luna Park – a 1930s-era amusement park on the northern shore of Sydney Harbor – was filled with classic rides, great arcade attractions and plenty of clowns.
My 15 hour flight here from Los Angeles was courtesy of a Qantas A380 (thank-you for the business class seat, Qantas) and I arrived to find the Vivid Sydney light and music festival underway.
Here are some snaps of some of the light installations I spotted on my first evening stroll.
I’ve been here for three – way too short – days and heading to Dallas on Monday with Qantas Airways, which starts flying the A380 between Sydney and Dallas on Monday, September 29th.
With the help of Destination NSW, I’ve been racing around the city trying to see the sights – and paying dearly to replace a broken camera – in preparation for an early morning tour of Sydney Airport.
Here are a few snaps of what I’ve spotted so far. More to come…
Spotted at the Museum of Sydney: souvenirs of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Was treated to a tour that included a face-to-face with a sleepy koala at the Taronga Zoo.