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Spent much of this weekend in Manly, on the north shore of Sydney. Their town slogan is '8 miles from Sydney, 1000 miles from care'. I was amused by the use of miles and not kilometers, although the town was beautiful too. I first went their on Saturday with ISS for the Manly to Spit walk, a 10km or so hike along the coast.

The day started with an early busride to Circular Quay with Cindy where we met the 20 odd others who were going on the trip. A bagel for me (more on that another time), and a rock cake for Cindy and then we boarded the ferry for the 30 minute ride across the harbour. We managed to get seats at the very back of the boat, so could watch the entire Sydney skyline disappear as we made our way over there. Once we got there Cindy, Virginia and I decided not to head right off on the walk with everyone else, as it would have been too many people trying to move together at once, and instead we decided to walk around Manly for a bit. We ended up finding 2 street markets, one arty and one flea markety, and also managed to get a canvas bag each to use for grocery shopping and cut down on plastic bag usage. It's a nice little bag with 'This is not a plastic bag' written on it.

After our town exploration we decided it was time to hit the trail, and started the walk. It started along the shore, and we crossed several beaches/parks before it wound inland into slightly drier land for a bit. Then there was a decent climb, which gave us a spectacular view of the harbour and Manly itself. A short treck through a bit of muddy terrain followed, and the last bit was along a beautiful white sanded beach which gave way to a not so nice beach before we came to the drawbridge that was the conclusion of the journey. By the end of the trip we had just caught up with some of the other walkers, and managed to catch a bus pretty quickly back to the city.

We got off at Wynyard station in the CBD and Cindy and I walked around a bit as we tried to find some decent food to grab. We ended up at the Pitt Street Mall and I munched on a spring roll while she had a smoothie. We even got to watch the Olympics on the widescreen plasma TV’s they had hanging all around the food court, but the endless parading of horses didn’t really do it for us. So then it was back on a bus and back to Randwick for us.

My night continued on with a trip back into the city and onto a train head up to a classmate’s Greek Olympic party complete with authentic Greek food and drink and lots of fun. Between the lamb, chicken, fried octopi, baklava and many other delicious delicacies I was stuffed with great food. The sad point of the night was seeing Australia lose to South Africa in rugby, but it was really cool to see a little bit of Durban, SA where the game was held and where Meg spent her semester abroad.

Adventures in Manly resumed the following day when we celebrated Cindy’s birthday there. About a dozen of us took a ferry up there and walked around the city scouting for a good place to eat. We eventually settled on a pizza place called Beaches, where I ended up sharing a feta cheese pizza and a pumpkin pizza, both of which were excellent. The post dinner festivities continued on the beach overlooking the ocean where banana topped lemon poppyseed cake with a single candle, flickering harshly in the strong ocean breeze, and chocolate chip muffins, both baked for the beloved birthday girl. Then we headed back to the pier and tried to estimate how deep the bay was where we were, while waiting for the ferry, which would whisk us west, back to downtown Sydney. (Try saying that 3 times fast). We got back just in time to hop on a bus and came home for a good night sleep after a long weekend.
7:44 AM