Sydney, Part II (5/29)

Manly Beach

The next morning was a Thursday.  I slept in a bit, then joined a fellow American from the hostel for the ferry ride out to Manly Beach.  It was windy as heck on the way, but we got some great views from the deck, and got lucky enough to spot a whale as well... first time I'd seen one in the wild.  The beach itself was really nice as well: nice sand, nice surf (there was actually a surf class going on), and much less touristy than Bondi Beach.  We wandered the extent of the beach itself, through a cave to an area that would have required some serious rock climbing to progress beyond, then back along the beach to a nature trail on the far side.

You have to look really closely, but there's a whale tale in there.

The Cave of Wonders! Or maybe just
a regular cave

The nature trail took us to what seemed like a completely different environment, from sand to scrub, and from palms to pines.  There was very little in the way of wildlife--a decent amount of birds, and a few frogs that we heard but never saw--and not many people either, although we did run into a few guys hitting golf balls from the clifftop into the ocean.

Surfing

Even the short version of the hike turned out to be a pretty decent workout, so we cut it a bit short in the hopes of catching the next return ferry.  It was just starting to rain (not to heavily, at least), which may have had some impact on our decision as well.  We spotted whales on the way back as well, but it went a bit downhill from there.  My map showed that the free shuttle ran late on Thursdays, but the lady at the bus terminal told us otherwise, so we ended up having to walk the 40ish minutes back to the hostel.  Normally that wouldn't have been so bad, but I had just spent all day (and most of the the previous several days) walking around, and my body was starting to feel it.  The worst part?  Later that night, two girls back at the hostel told us that they'd been able to catch the free shuttle just fine, and later than we'd been there.  Thanks bus terminal lady!

Are we still in Australia, Toto?

That evening more than made up for the travails of the day, though.  Dinner was put on by the hostel again, and once again it was way cheaper than I could've eaten out for: $1/each for Aussie dogs (basically just a hot dog inside bread instead of a bun, but they were big dogs and the bread was great) with all the fixings.  After that it was on to the main attraction: Vivid Sydney, a giant festival of "light, music, and ideas."  I joined a few more folk from the hostel and hopped the train down to the harbour for the light show at the Opera House.

Ooooh....

Wow.  Just wow.  The main attraction was the Opera House itself, but lights were being projected onto several other buildings and some smaller installations down there, much of it accompanied by music.  The area was all sorts of crowded, but it still wasn't hard to get some amazing views.

Butterflies?  Okay.

I'm not even sure what this is, but it's cool enough that I don't care.

As if Australia needed more rabbits.  At least these ones weren't breeding.

So I accidentally arrived in the middle of one of Sydney's biggest events.  As I am occasionally fond of saying, luck is just one of my many skills.  I'll just leave this video here for you to enjoy....