Sydney in the sun

When we were here at Christmas we didn’t see the sun the whole 4 days so it was nice to see it how it should be seen. What a difference the photo’s make when you have a nice blue background. As Claire said we saw 3 airports that we haven’t seen before yesterday, Townsville, Coolengata and Sydney. We drove into Sydney and Townsville last time. Coolengata looks even better from the air than it does from the ground, a real pretty place. As it was raining most the time we were here last time, we took all the modes of transport that Sydney has to offer, the monorail, boats and tourist bus, just to keep dry. We headed off on foot so that I could get plenty of pictures on the way, over Piermont Bridge and along Cockle Bay to Darling Harbour as far as we could walk. Look at the second picture, our apartments are to the right of the Novotel in the middle, it’s called the Oaks Goldborough. We are on the side that you can see but only on the second floor so we cant see the harbour, just trees. Then we had to take the roads for a while, but kept close to the bay to Walsh Bay which is really pretty where the rich live and moor their boats outside. There are 4 or five fingers and the last couple you can start to see Sydney Bridge. If we lived here, our boat would be that little dingy on the end.
Its quite a long walk right around to Circular Bay but its pretty and lots of ferry trips go from there. Most people walk over the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but we walked under it where you can see the Opera house. We just arrived at the piers to find that a ferry was leaving in 5 minutes to Manly Island so we rushed and got a ticket, got on but all the good seats were already taken so we stood at the bow. Good choice, as you can see both sides from there, most the seats you could only see one side. We were straight off and I could take even more pictures of the Bridge and Opera House from different angles. Its quite a quick boat and only takes about 30 minutes so we were soon there. We headed down what looked to be the high street without cars to another beach then looked for a pub to replace some liquid that we had lost. Although it’s not so humid here it’s still hot, especially in the sun and there was very little breeze.
We popped into the New Brighton Hotel for a quick one but it wasn’t long before 2 guys that had been drinking all morning started to talk to us. I can’t believe that I didn’t take a photo of them, it was only when we had left that I realized that my camera was still over my shoulder like the perfect tourist. Richard or “Kavy” looked a bit like a sea captain with a wirey beard and we didn’t catch the other guys name, but he was a really nice guy originally from Hungary that has been here for 21 years. We all got on and they started to help us decide where we should stop on our way up to Brisbane. We were just about to go and Kavy insisted on buying us another drink so we stayed a while longer. Then, of course, we had to get them one back and on it went. It ended when one of the bar staff came up to Kavy and told him to finish his drink and be on his way. He couldn’t believe it and asked why, and to our surprise he had been to the ladies toilets and scared a few people. His excuse was that the toilet that he used was the gents the last time that he was in there 20 years ago. This didn’t seem to satisfy the barman so they had to get on their way. That was our chance to escape so we rushed off to the beach and then crept back to the main street where we found a nice place to eat. Trouble was, it turned out to not be such a nice place to eat food wise, it looked nice but the food was dreadful and now I will have to take Claire out to eat tonight as well because we couldn’t eat it all.
After our late lunch we headed back to the ferry to come back to Sydney and luckily the ferry had just started to load up so we got straight on. It wasn’t long before we were back and started the long walk back again, which somehow seemed a lot hotter later in the day. We were glad when we gat back to Cell block H and headed straight down to the pool for a quick dip and spa. Bubbles seem to take all your aches and pains away, especially when the water is hot like it was. We weren’t supposed to go back to our apartment until you have completely dried and changed clothes but I hadn’t taken any with me so had to come back in my wet trunks and a towel; good job there wasn’t a fire alarm like last time we were here.
Talking of alarms, we had only checked in yesterday, dumped our bags and headed off to stock up the fridge when the fire alarm went off; we weren’t even there 30 minutes this time. Lets hope we get some good sleep tonight as we start our new drive tomorrow.