16th November - Manly near Sydney

We left newcastle at 4:45 am with Paul as he does go to work in Sydney. The journey wasn't too bad at all at that time in the morning, we also got to see some fog over the fields that would help any zombie movie, I say we, Sarah slept the whole way down.

We got to drive over the harbour bridge which was cool and Paul dropped us off at Circular quay, and we said our goodbyes. Next stop was Manly!

Manly is a Sydney Suburb in the Northern beaches that has some excellent surf. An awesome place to spend 4 nights, it was also the location for the very old film BMX Bandits starring a young Nicole Kidman and Steve Guttenberg (he never ages as he was in Coccoon!).

We walked as much of manly as possible, around the lagoon and the lookouts and past 'Ocean world'. There was also a volleyball tournament being set up too for the weekend so hopefully we will catch some of that.

On Thursday, we got the ferry over to Sydney Central to do a bit of sight seeing. We went to the Rocks area and another art gallery that we got stuck in due to the lifts not working. We also saw some guy catching grapes in his mouth, trying to break the world record for most in a minute and then most in half an hour, he was on well over a thousand when we got bored and moved on, it was also raining.

Because it was raining that day, a freakishly cold 16 degrees and snow in some parts of the country, we went to the cinema. 'Saw 3' was the film and it was particularily gruesome but quite revealing in its story line if you'd seen the other 2. The freak weather was only forecast for the one day though, luckily back up to the 20s for the rest of the week.

Then we went over to Darling harbour for some more sight seeing and pictures. Stopping in shops on the way home for some undercrackers (unsuccessfully I might add, Oz land has some really expensive ones), we went home for a meal out at the local restaurant where we could have one of our special wines bought from the Hunter Valley.

A long day so sleep ensued

Pricey

P.S. Happy birthday to Flat Jeff and the Opo Rob. Welcome to the club! Also a seperate late happy birthday to Sue P, not the Ma Sue P but the other one from MAN chester. All have beers on us.