My friend Tim Stokes was kind enough to let us drop our luggage at his place while we went downtown to see stuff, since we couldn't check in to our next AirBnB yet. We were planning to take public transportation downtown, but Tim pointed out that with 6 of us, it would be cheaper to pay the A$20 (about $13 US) to park downtown, so we did that.
We gathered at the town hall building for an "I'm Free" tour, where you meet someone in a green "I'm Free" T-shirt, and they give you a guided tour around the city for "free", and then you can tip them whatever you think the tour was worth.
While we waited for the tour to begin, we explored the adjacent St. James Cathedral. Here is a model of the cathedral inside, made out of toothpicks.
There were beautiful arches and stained glass inside.
I liked the decorated organ pipes.
As the tour entered Hyde Park and approached St. Mary's Cathedral, we came across a pair of sister missionaries. This one was named Sister Wilson!
Linette commented on how pretty the vegetation was. Here is a picture of St. Mary's Cathedral through the eucalyptus trees.
Part way through the tour, we paused at a square, and I got a picture with this statue.
One place had a scale model of downtown Sydney, placed under a glass floor, which was kind of cool. It was fun to see where I had been during the past week.
The tour ended us at a point overlooking the iconic Sydney Opera House.
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| Jon and Shauna Hunt, Rob and Melissa Lym, and Randy and Linette Wilson, overlooking the Sydney Opera House. |
When the tour was over, we walked back down to St. Mary's Cathedral to take a look inside.
Everyone was pretty tired, since the group had travelled from America with little sleep and the tour had been about 3 hours.
So it was nice to sit in a pleasant cathedral and relax for a minute.
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| St. Mary's Cathedral. |
If you take a picture at just the wrong angle, in front of the cathedral, you can give this statue a hat, like my Dad once did with the Space Needle.
After the tour, we walked over to the same Ribs & Burgers place that I had eaten at the night before with Tim Stokes, and everyone enjoyed the burgers and shakes there. Finally, we drove back down to Tim Stokes' house to pick up our luggage.
He told us about how he ended up with his house. He said that he went to an auction, and he was the only one bidding on this house, so they told him that he could have it for the reserve price of A$940,000 or something like that. He said that no, he would probably pay more like 820 for it. So then later in the auction they came back to him and said that the owner had accepted his "offer", and the way auctions work, it as a done deal, even though it hadn't been intentional. It's an older house that needed some work, but it turned out ok for him, because the place is worth like A$1.2M now. He says he's earned more from the appreciation of the house than he has in his salary during the time they've lived there.
We had just eaten, but Tim recommended that we grab a pork roll, so we did. It was indeed a tasty sandwich.
At long last, we arrived at our AirBnB house that we were renting for the week. The lady showed me around and where to park, and then we went in and got settled in. We were determined to keep everyone awake until at least 8pm to beat the jet lag, so we played a game or two of Bohnanza before calling it a night.
Our rental house was across the street and across a park from Bronte Beach. Our room had its own little balcony overlooking the ocean, which was great for "gazeebing" (reading scriptures outside in the morning, as one might do in a gazebo).
That first morning, Linette and I went for a jog along the coast. There is a cool coastal walk that goes at least from Bondi Beach to the north down to Coogee Beach to the south. So we walked and jogged to the south as far as Clovelly Beach.
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| Overlooking Bronte Beach from the south. |
When we went up and around, we got some great views of the rocky shore, overlooked by the Waverly Cemetery.
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| Waverly Cemetery. |
At Clovelly Beach, there is a cement path that goes right down into the water, where there is an underwater nature trail, with underwater signs pointing out different things. We wanted to take our snorkel gear and do that, but ran out of time (plus the water is pretty cold).
After our jog, we grabbed a few groceries (and restocked on Tim-Tams) and then "gazeebed" for a bit on the balcony.
That day we decided to take the ferry over to the cute coastal town of Manly, which is on the north shore of Sydney harbor. Since we were going to hit the daily maximum of A$16/day on public transportation anyway, we rode the bus from our place to downtown, took the trains from there, and then hopped on a ferry.
While we waited for the ferry, we tried out one of the many great gelato places in Sydney.
The ferry ride to Manly offers great views of the Sydney Opera House and the Harbor Bridge.
On the ferry, we had fun chatting with several men who were refugees from Iran or Syria. They were excited to take a picture with us afterwards.
Like most beaches in Australia, Manly has a lot of surfing going on.
As we walked along the shore, we saw some bright, colorful lorikeets. They're very pretty, and tend to travel around in pairs.
We also saw a cool lizard.
We made our way around to Shelly Beach, perhaps called that because the sand is full of crushed shells.
Shelly Beach was said to have good snorkeling, so we gave it a go. The water was pretty chilly.
We saw schools of fish, and it was fun to see them feeding on the seaweed and stuff.
Here's a cool spotted fish.
Linette went until her teeth started to chatter enough that it was hard to keep a good seal on the snorkel.
We didn't see anything too exotic, but it was still fun for me.
Shauna also snorkeled with us for a bit, but the other three decided that it was too cold to be worth it, so they enjoyed relaxing on the beach.
We heard some kookaburras laughing up in a tree. There were three of them sitting in a row up there.
A couple of Australian brush turkeys walked around the beach looking for scraps.
I used biodegradable sunblock in order to be environmentally conscious. But Shauna made fun of me because it made me look like a ghost.
We had a nice, if a bit chilly, day at the beach.
As the sun started to go down, everything looked peaceful as we walked back towards Manly.
Manly is a fun town, small enough to walk anywhere.
We were treated to an amazing sunset that evening.
There was a tree there that was packed full of hundreds of lorikeets all screeching to each other, so that was exciting.
It was dark by the time we took the ferry back from Manly to Sydney.
The Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge looked cool at night. (You can see seagulls lit up above the building, probably looking for bugs that are attracted to the light).
It was another long day, and everyone was jet lagged, so we were tired as we wended our way back to our place via ferry, subway and bus.
In the next episode, we visit the Blue Mountains.
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