Manly

I find that I've been waking up around 9AM everyday since I've been in Australia and I'm always hungry. Back home I could sleep away the whole day and have one meal a day! I asked my roomies if it's just me but they said it's the same for them too. Anyway, it’s been a week now since I landed in Sydney and I still haven’t done any sightseeing at all. It was a beautiful sunny day, so I grabbed Cam and we headed towards Sydney Harbour. I made a mental note that I must get sunscreen lotion and insect repellant today because I was starting to peel from the Bondi Beach walk. I’ve got my daypack on, my camera, and a city map trying to figure our way to the harbour so I really looked like a lost tourist! It took us about 1/2hr walking through the CBD (central business district, or so-called downtown) because the pedestrian lights took forever. You basically get like 10 seconds to cross and 5min waiting for the next light. Most locals just cross when there were no traffic, then us tourists just looked on all confused. Pedestrians here don’t have the right of way and it’s hard for me to get used to.

We finally got to the harbour and we walked along the water and came to the bottom of Sydney Harbour Bridge. Across the water is Luna Park, a small fairground with the face of some sort of clown for entrance that I’ve wanted to check out. I asked an Aussie passerby about getting across to Luna Park and he said it only opens on weekends, and besides that there isn’t much to see unless we take the ferries to Manly which come every 1/2hr and it’s about a 30min ride, and they run till past midnight. Since we just missed one and we were both hungry, we decided to grab lunch first. I had breaky maybe just couple hrs ago and I was starving already. I’m always hungry for some reason since I’ve been in Australia, and Cam was constantly amazed at how much I eat. We quickly made it back to the ferries and got ourselves roundtrip tickets for $14 each. The ferries were pretty old school so that was cool. We sat outside and just enjoyed the view, the sun, and the breeze, and I was basically falling asleep.

Right across the street from the ferry terminal in Manly was Corso, an area full of shops and restaurants. The beach was quite similar to Bondi where there were a lot of surfers, and it was quite windy too. We walked around town for a bit and I was getting hungry again and so was Cam. so we tried to look up on the tourist map for restaurants. We went around in circles looking for this Greek restaurant which turned out to be right across from where we started but it was closed, so we ended up eating at Manly Grill right by the beach. Cam had some fresh oysters and I had peking duck on flat breads. The food was good but pricy compared to Canada, which is something both me and Cam are still getting used to. When we were getting lost earlier Cam made a point about all the shops having “Manly” in their names; Manly Cafe, Manly Hotel, Manly Gym, etc. Everything was so manly in Manly.

We were a bit early when we got back to the ferries so we decided to take a stroll in the park next to it. I had to go to the toilets and right outside were a few small wild parrots! It was the first time I’ve seen wild parrots! We didn’t go too far, but on the foot path there were stensils that said “Penguins crossing,” also another thing I’d love to see. The ferry left 5min early so we didn’t make it, and you couldn’t go out once you’ve passed the gate, so we had to sit at the terminal for another 1/2hr for the next ferry. We stopped by Liquoreland on our way back to the hostel to pick up some booze and we just chilled out with the other backpackers in front of Railway as usual. I also got to chat with a really cool German chic Jana, while Cam chatted with her Noah from Norway who's also as cool, worked as a cook on cruise ships and am looking for work in the city. Jana was much younger than me but we were both pretty drunk and we ended up having a pretty deep conversation about our family and travelling on our own. She's done a couple jobs around the city, but she said the employers all turned out to be shit, so she's still looking for work. It was a good night.