Done and dusted?

Waiting for the bus to take us to the airport, sitting in the sun on our veranda, 20 metres from the beach.  Wind off the waves carrying the tanoy commentary of day two of the surf festival.  Found myself awake an hour before I needed to be so took some shots of the surf boaters racing.  Six days now stored in our synapses, with words and photos stored as electronic switches on a server somewhere.   The beginning of a holiday is all anticipation and adrenal chemical signals.  The end is all loops of braincell sparks.  Strange transition.

Lah-di-last day

Rain!  And Manly is hosting a surf festival!  Go to gather bread and get shouted at by the thunder.  No one is sure what to do until S hits the nail, hire a car and drive up the coast North.  Stride purposely out into the rain and come back with the car.  We pass through a mix of place names ranging from typical Aussie to abnormally cryptic,  Dee Why, Curl Curl, Narrabeen and last Palm Beach right out on a Peninsula.  High deep forest tuned to the white noise of cicadas, freckled with multi-million dollar houses and a beautiful beach topped and tailed with rock pools.  The girls were enchanted, R and I spending time bouncing over the waves while the life guards drilled themselves.

Drove home stopping for a bite of Japanese in Dee Why, and bed with hardly a peep.  Right now Sydney is definitely somewhere we could return to for more exploration.

Blue Mountains

Booked a tour but had to meet the bus at a very unsociable hour.
10:00 - Nepean river, tranquille.
11:00 - Flat Rock outside Wentworth. Long stare across deep verdant valleys, virtiginous.
11:30 - Scenic World - winla, meni, genado and dave. Cable car across katomba falls and another down into thick silent shadowy rain forest and derelect coal mine.  Three lyre birds spotted, displaying with tail feathers and lolloping warbles.  Twenty minute boardwalk back to the. steepest railway in the world which hauls us living cargo backwards up the near verticle cliff and then through it to our exit.
13:00 - lunch at Leura, not bad, not great.  Lovely little village
15:00 - Views that leave us speechless over Wentworth falls and tastes of bitter nut and sweet leaves from our guide and local vegetation.
15:30 - Rock engraving of a kangaroo apprx. 500 years old. 17:00 - Short stop in Olympic Park, massive open vistas with many people but sparsely scattered and enormous stadia like gounded intergalactic space craft. It's how I imagine Canberra. Then down tot wharf for an hours criuse back to Circle Quay. This reveals just how contorted the banks of the river really are as it approaches and retreats in repeated modulations and all the time housed with with river siders. Of the cities I've seen, Sydney is is defined most by its water.

Shops

Antibiotics for K but she's feeling better.  Shopping trip for Mum, K and me.  I walked down to Shelly Beach.  Gorgeous cove on the end of the peninsula.  Walked back along the residential road on the cliff, Bower Street, some of the most beautiful houses I've seen so far.  The landlords are water dragons sunning themselves in the margins between ocean and road.

Grannie and R stay in Manly to play on the nice beach.  They went to Oceanworld and fiddled with the fishes.  We wandered around the Opera House, ate looking at the Harbour Bridge and strode down to the Pitt Street Mall.  Lost in the malls until we realised it was 7 in the evening and time to head back to Manly.  Sunset over the city.

Day of rest

Lazy nine am start and a wander to the shopswith Mum dropped us back with Suji and the girls at midday.  Tripped into a breakfast bar for food and then back to the apartment to let an off colour Kira sort herself out.  Back out after a while down through the town for shopping and an afternoon by the sea.  The beach by the apartment is full on pacific rollers.  But across the spit next to the ferry  port the beach is calm and netted.  Raya described it as the other's good twin.

Manly is a chilled out town, very like Freemantle in attitude.  Kira getting hotter and very sleepy complaining of a sore throat.  Pasta at home.  Hoping it isn't too bad :(

Ph does HP

Thirty minutes ferry ride from Manly right into Circle Quay.  Bright sunny day rolling purposefully along in the blue bay by the steep tree and house lined cliffs.  The tops of the Sydney CBD poke over the last peninsula and the boat reveals the Opera House and Harbour Bridge.  Only the most jaded commutors could carry on staring at their laptops.

We've got twenty minutes to get to the Powerhouse Museum south of Darling Harbour but our information is skewed and there is no bus here.  A taxi does the job and we rock into the Harry Potter exhibition for eleven.  It is full of props from all the films.  The girls are in their cups.

A tram takes us from the Ph to Darling Harbour.  Sun's up high and the time difference and 'early' starts have taken their toll.  We eat, and head back to Circle Quay via ferry, and catch the Manly ferry home.  Sitting on the porch, the fresh sea wind carries the salt and life guard's PA announcements to us as we rest and gear up for the evening.

We walked north up the beech tonight. I'm not sure that fat or ugly people are allowed on Manley beech.  Between the power walkers, joggers, cyclists and surfers, it feels like we might have stepped onto the set of any generic American drama.   Ash's Table served us well, we're all nicely stuffed with good food and wine.

False start

All planned and ready to go.  Up at 3 am to catch the taxi, quick check online of the flight ... dismayed, delayed by seven hours!  And now the taxi has arrived.  Paid him off and called Virgin.  They moved us to an earlier flight but still won't be in Sydney until after 6pm.  They gave us a thousand dollar credit to spend with them.  That may be generous, but not sure if we will use it.
Back to bed.

Taxi rebooked but doesn't arrive (:n:).  Operator says it wasn't in the system.  Have to take two cabs instead of the maxi we'd booked, but on the road at last.

Because we moved to another flight we weren't able to all sit together, but a nice man swapped his seat for mine so that I could sit with the two young ones.  We sat on the tarmac for three quarters of an hour while they searched the holds for the luggage of an abscondee.  And at last we're up ... and two films later, (and a pastrami sandwich) we land in Sydney, grab our bags and meet our mini bus driver Pete.

Pete is oldish and fattish and has his shirt open with white hair over the foothills of his stomach.   We exchange introductions but he opts for the radio while I stare tourist eyed at the fruit bats, buildings and hewn rocks as we roller coaster through the northern 'burbs to the rocky coast of Manly. 

We've done alright, the apartment is comfy with a large outdoor area on the ground floor. The girls are full of beans running about and making long exclamations of certitude about their new, temporary lodgings.
'I won't live on the ground floor, I'm not coming in!'
'I only want to stay in places like this!'
Next on the list is food.  Local Coles and a forgivable meal in a local restaurant.  Bad wine, but service beyond it.  And all the while the sea and wind combine in chorus.  The salt tang on the air makes us all remember England, while the holiday thrill has us all looking forward to tomorrow.