Sydney Explorations

With the whole city of Sydney to explore, and only three days to do it in, we wasted no time and checking off the major tourist attractions. After a morning checking out the outside of the Opera House and Circular Quay,  it was time to hop on the famous Manly Ferry and head to Manly Beach. It wasn't exactly "beachy" weather, but we were not going to let a little rain get in our way. 

Dave, enjoying a Tasmanian beer, taking in the view from the Ferry.

He swears he remembers the ferry from his trip here as a child, but I am doubtful. 

The boat wasn't quite as big as the Staten Island Ferry (and it wasn't free either!) but it was a neat old fashioned ferry, and it was very cool to get to walk around on the outer deck during the trip. 

I don't know if we took enough pictures of us and the Opera House. In hindsight, one picture of us actually TOGETHER in front of it might have been nice...perhaps we can photshop me in here somehow.

 

Foggy city view. 

"I'm on a boat!"

Look at all those silly surfers braving the elements for some Manly waves. It was so cold we didn't even manage to get down to the beach, I didn't need to stick my toes in that water to know it was chilly. 

Dave likes the name of the town =)

Manly was a neat little beach town. It was amazing to me that just a 20 minute ferry ride from the hustle and bustle of downtown you could arrive in a very relaxed, old fashioned beach town. Don't get me wrong, it caters to tourism in a huge way, but it retains its vibe as a chilled out surfer town. I wish we had budgeted more time for exploring but we had dinner plans, so we checked out the beach, did some shopping and got back on the boat. Really, the boat ride alone was more than half the reason to go to Manly!

View from the boat on the way home. 

Chilling out on the front of the boat. 

Empahsis on the "chill"- it was brrrrrr cold! 

Me and the bridge.

Just in case there were not enough pictures of the Opera House...here is another

Le bridge. 

If you look carefully, you can see little people on the top of the bridge (to the left of the flag) doing the famed bridge climb. We thought about partaking in this pretty noted Sydney activity, but I am pretty glad we didn't. I have no problem with heights, and the bridge is neat looking, but I cannot imagine the view from the top in dreary weather is that thrilling, and as whined-about previously, it was cold! So it was probably really cold way up top on the bridge. But almost every time we looked at the bridge we could see little tiny people making their way up the side. Maybe next time. 

Just one more... cannot get enough Opera House!