Manly Sydney

Manly to Sydney

It's winter here, so we were up super early (thanks to the time difference) and ate breakfast before sunrise. Set out on our hike at 8. We hiked the Manly Scenic Walkway, an amazing trail that hugs the coast for about 10km. It is an assortment of bush, beach, stoney stairs and coastal walkways. It was lovely!! In addition to kookaburras and cockatoos, we also saw colorful lorikeets. There's a kookaburra in the picture at left. You'll just have to believe me.

The Manly scenic walkway also had the most high tech automated public free toilet I have ever peed upon. It was all electronic and steel. After entering the chamber, you pushed a button to close the door and muzak began to play. The soap, water and dryer were all motion activated, but the coolest thing was that there was no flush button. It flushed when you wash your hands. No wash, no flush. Sorry, no potty pics. As we finished our hike it started to POUR which continued on and off the rest of the day. Winter is the dry season here, this is unusual weather. Or at least that's what they keep telling me.

Later in the day we took the ferry over to Sydney. It was raining so hard, not only could we not be out on the top deck, but we could not see much through the wet and steamy windows. We decided to go to the Aquarium in Darling Harbour. They had some great exhibits, including two large tanks where you walk through the bottom in clear tubes and you can watch the rays, turtles, dugongs, sharks and other fish swim over and around you. It was exciting, but I felt very sad for the large creatures confined to the tanks. I can not imagine they are happy in there. I will be seeing many of these creatures free and wild in Shark Bay later this month.''We had a glass of wine overlooking the harbour as the sun went down so we could take the ferry back in the dark and see the lights of the city at night.