July 1 - A Manly Day

We took it pretty easy this morning. After my obligatory sunrise run around the far side of Darling Harbor, we walked around the corner to Starbucks for a little taste of home and one of those delicious chocolate croissants that we've only seen at Starbucks in Australia. Around 11:00 we began our stroll up to the ferry dock (about a 2km walk through the central business district) and found that Sydney at lunchtime is a very energetic place. Not quite like Shinjuku, but pretty darn lively nonetheless. What a great city!

We arrived at the ferry wharf just in time to board the Narrabeen, the Sydney Harbour Ferry that would take us to Manly. Manly is a sort of suburb/seaside resort which came highly recommended as a day trip by Dad (Patrick) and Megan as a fun place to visit and a cheap way to get a great harbour tour.



The ferry ride itself was a real treat. The ferry departed from the Circular Quay, a docks area between the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, and cruised through the harbor before arriving at Manly. Many sailboats accented the harbourside parks and neighborhoods – it actually looked kind of like a rugged Lake Washington.

I think Manly is best described as a cross between Kirkland and Huntington Beach. We arrived at the wharf and very nearly fell victim to the vortex of deliciousness surrounding the Bavarian Bier Bar at the wharf...but luckily Margaret turned Zombie-Sean around and pulled us toward the town :)



We strolled along the main street, which spans the isthmus on which the center of town lies, and picked up a kebab for lunch. This walking street, like the esplanade along the seaside, was absolutely plastered with restaurants and shops. After we entertained the locals just a little bit with a lip-sync of Bohemian Rhapsody in the kebab shop (it was playing on the radio, how could we resist!?), we headed to the beach on the far side. We sat down at the seaside, ate our kebabs, watched the surfers and the crashing waves, and enjoyed the warm sun and the mild breeze. All while evading the well-fed beggar seagulls, which seemed less skilled at airborne fry-catching than our feathered friends down at Ivar's fish bar. Manly beach is kind of cool, there is a causeway all the way along the beach with shops on one side and tall pines on the other -- which would have looked pretty out of place had we not already been surprised by funky pines in Vietnam. Even more out of place seemed the laurikeets (some very colorful, playful, and noisy, tropical birds) which occupied the shoreline just as in Cairns, 1200 miles north.



After lunch, we followed the seaside walk along the shore, around a small headland, and into Cabbage Tree Cove, where the path had fun little metal sculptures of the local sea life embedded in the retaining wall. The tide was rising, so the waves made the walk feel a little more like a boat than the edge of a continent. We reached a small swimming beach and park, and headed off the concrete and up a dirt track to the North Headland, which is an Australian National Park. The path rose along the seaside cliff top for maybe two kilometers, wending and weaving between rocks and scrub, and offering wonderful views of the cliffs and the tide-line shelves of rock below. It reminded me of some shorelines in England and Ireland where the headlands rise up like any other rolling hills, then drop straight to the blue infinity of sea as if chopped with an axe.



The trail popped through a hole in the stone wall which has retired from protecting an Artillery Training Center, rose through the dense and gnarled scrub trees of the headland, and onto the gentle slope facing the harbour. After a few more kilometers we reached a spot which offered a breathtaking panorama over the harbour and the entire city, which was 10-15km distant. A couple hundred meters further was a grassy spot that viewed the harbour, city, and coastline cliffs to the south of the main harbour entrance – a truly dramatic view, especially on this crisp bluebird day with the waning sun painting the scrub orange, red, and deep green, and the calm sea a wonderful deep blue that reminds us all too much of home.



We sat and enjoyed the view for a few more minutes before chasing the sun down the hill and back to Manly. We arrived in the town center just before sunset, and decided to hang out for a while and eat dinner before heading back to the bustle of Sydney aboard the ferry (like in Seattle, they run every 30 minutes until late at night, so there was no rush). We stumbled across a deli and picked up some greek salad and a small dessert, which we ate while sitting on a leaf-shaped bench made for two overlooking the harbour-side beach next to the ferry wharf.

And then it happened. We just couldn't resist the massive gravitational pull of the Bavarian Bier Bar. Nobody could really tell you how, but we soon found ourselves happily perched on a pair of bar stools, mere meters from the departing ferries, with 1/2-liters of Franziskaner Dunkel-Weisse in front of us. I asked Margaret if we were being wimps by drinking German beer while down under, and she responded with “no, we just have good taste”.

Cheers, Mates!