Sunday 2nd and Monday 3rd March

A lazy day today after all the excitement of yesterday!

Cheryl and Matt went to a wedding yesterday so are feeling a little fragile this morning, and their friends, David and Linda and their daughters who babysat, stayed overnight too so it was a full house. David cooked us all a splendid breakfast although Matt couldn’t face it and retired to bed! Then we just lazed around – lovely!

On Monday, the sun shone again and we were ready to have another busy day so Matt drove us to the ferry and we went into Sydney. This time we found the Tourist Office in The Rocks and picked up some good info for our future journeys up and down the coast. We’d bought a road map on Saturday, so now we were ready to make some more solid plans.

Since we hadn’t explored The Rocks area on Sat, we decided to spend an hour or so there before catching another ferry to Manly. Tom needed yet another bit for his gadgets, and I wanted some more glasses cleaning wipes. Australia has not caught up with us or NZ in this respect. You can buy the spray and cleaning cloths but no-one has heard of the individually wrapped wipes, either pharmacies or optometrists. The equivalent of Boots doesn’t seem to exist. There are lots of pharmacies, some quite large, but none that we found had as extensive a range as Boots or even Superdrug. So we failed in our quest for the wipes despite some very helpful assistants.

We caught the 2.00pm ferry out to Manly, which is northeast of the city. It’s a pushme-pullyou ferry, with two sharp ends, no blunt end and a propellor at both ends, so it doesn’t have to bother about turning round at each terminal. It only takes 30 minutes, but crosses the harbour heads and can be a bit rough there as you cross sideways on to the current. You are warned about this, so Tom decided to go inside for this part of the crossing. As it happens, it’s only for about 5 minutes as you cross the harbour mouth so he needn’t really have bothered.

Having docked at the pier, we found the Tourist office right beside it and got a map of the town and some info on what to do in the 2-3 hours we’d decided to spend. The main attraction is the beach which is long and clean. The waves come in in long lines and there were lots of surfers, although not many really good ones, which was a disappointment. For a country that warns about the dangers of sunbathing, there were an awful lot of bodies lying on the beach, but I suppose many of them were visitors. However, there were 2 who had obviously heard the warnings, and were well covered up.The area safe for swimming was a very small slice at one end of the beach, (this varies according to the number of people on the beach and the number of lifeguards available, as well as the actual state of the water) and the rest of the beach was teeming with would-be surfers. We strolled most of the way along Marine Parade then cut through to the town and walked back down towards the centre, calling in at an Op shop on the way where we bought some books to last the rest of our holiday. It was really hot so we had a gigantic ice cream and went to watch the surfers. Tom took some hilarious pics of a couple of young Chinese girls who were trying to have their picture taken leaping in the air on the beach. They must have been exhausted by the time the photographer got it right! People watching can be such fun!

Manly consists of little beyond the beach and the tourist shops, bars and eateries. It’s pleasant enough but we found 2-3 hours was long enough to spend there. Tom couldn’t resist having his photo taken next to the street sign, then it was back to the ferry and back to Sydney. It was rush hour when we arrived at Circular Quay and hordes of bodies were waiting for ferries – it must be better than waiting underground in London for the next train, at least you’re in the open air. Our Rivercat wasn’t too full and it took a different route back to Meadowbank so we saw some different views. Arriving at our stop, there were no taxis to be seen so we walked to the railway station. There were no taxis there either. So we walked to the main road, Victoria Road and started to walk in the direction of Ermington. There were no taxis there either, nor any buses! Tom was fast becoming my least favourite person but I was adding to my 10,000 paces for the day, so I carried on. Then I saw the signs of where we were – extreme sense of humour failure!! 3km at least to home!! Then there were the signs that the footpath was about to disappear as there was no footway under the railway bridge AFTER we’d started to walk that way – so we had to backtrack to the last pedestrian crossing. I’d had enough by now and walked to a petrol station to ask about taxis when, lo and behold, a taxi materialised and my “hero” flagged him down! The driverwas a very nice man – but then he was being paid to be a very nice man – and took us to the shopping centre near to home where we bought a few little necessities then – walked home!! Only about half a kilometre this time!

Cheryl and Matt couldn’t believe Tom had made me walk so far, but at least we were home for the night. I explained that we had tried to ring earlier from the city but they weren’t in, and Tom hadn’t left a message so they had no idea of our whereabouts or timings.
After dinner, we all sat and watched the cricket – I’m becoming quite a fan, especially as there seems to be a streaker at each of the matches that have been on TV. Bedtime was fairly early as all the sun, sea air and exercise had worn us out. Tom still had not regained the title of “flavour of the month”, but a few Pimms had mellowed me a little!