Although it’s still early springtime here in Australia, we had an unseasonably hot day on my second Saturday in Sydney. The temperature reached 36 degrees Celsius! That’s about 97 degrees Fahrenheit. I took full advantage of the weather and walked down to Sydney Harbour and caught the ferry to Manly Beach. Manly is about 7 nautical miles from Sydney and the ferry ride took about a half hour.
I got to Manly around 9:30 and first walked around for a few
minutes trying to decide where to have breakfast and where to buy a swimsuit. I settled on this little café called Bean
Rush for breakfast and had to go to several shops to find a swimsuit that was
under $200. Everything in Australia is
expensive but the prices they were charging for their swimsuits were
outrageous. I bought a few other beach
supplies and then went and rented a bicycle for the day. Manly Beach is only about .2 miles from the
Wharf but I wanted to get out of the city a bit and away from all those pesky
tourists.
I first rode to North Head which is located in Sydney Harbour
National Park. The lookout there offers
a phenomenal view of Sydney Harbour, the city of Sydney and the Tasman
Sea. To get to this lookout I had to
bike up a couple of long and winding hills.
And did I mention that it was extremely hot that day? By the time I reached the top I could feel my
skin burning so I applied a second coat of sunscreen.
And let me warn you about the flies in Australia. When it gets hot, the flies come out in full
force and there isn’t much you can do to keep them off of you! Just Google “Australia flies” and you’ll see
what I’m talking about.
After soaking in the views from North Head, my next stop was
Shelly Beach. The lady at the swimsuit
shop told me that it’s a great little beach that’s not as crowded as Manly. Boy was she wrong! It is a small beach but there were people
everywhere. I was able to find a spot to
drop my bag and towel and then I headed straight for the water. I was really hot and was looking forward to
jumping into the nice, cool ocean but I forgot that it’s still early
spring. The water hasn’t had time to
warm up yet and on that day the water was freezing! I went in about thigh-deep and that was all I
could handle. So I went and just laid on
the beach but then about 20 minutes later a thunderstorm started rolling in. It never really started raining but the sky
got dark and cloudy and there was a good amount of lightning.
So I headed back to town, grabbed some lunch and waited for
the clouds to pass. I guess the lightning
scared most everyone away because when I went back to Manly Beach there was
almost no one there. I spent the rest of
the day working on my tan and watching a bunch of kids surfing.
I caught a late ferry back to Sydney because I wanted to see
the Sydney Opera House from the water at night – gorgeous!
Blessed with another amazing day!
No comments:
Post a Comment