Today we hopped a ferry from nearby our hotel over to Manly Beach. It is late summer in Australia and we were hoping to spend some time on the beach. Sydney is much further south than we anticipated so it isn’t quite as warm as we were expecting. We also didn’t know about the jellyfish! When we arrived at the beach we discovered large pontoon supported jellyfish nets and signs clearly showing that we could only swim inside those nets. Like many creatures in Australia, the jellyfish can be deadly. We decided not to take our chances and did a little wading instead – inside the net. We left the beach and hiked up and around an old army base. The views were spectacular and we discovered that we had wandered our way onto the set for Australia’s biggest loser show. We snapped a shot of the flags before being kindly told to leave. We hopped a city bus back to town and realized that we had both gotten much more sun than we thought. We bought a couple of beach towels on our way back to the ferry terminal. After a short ride across the harbor, we headed out to join our harbor bridge climb. We suited up in protective gear and climbing harnesses and followed our guide through twisting and turning cable routes to the top of the harbor bridge. The views were spectacular.
After returning to solid ground we took a water bus to Darling harbor only to discover that restaurants close really early in Sydney. We wandered our way home and grabbed a frozen pizza at a convenience store and some chicken nuggets from the McDonalds near our hotel. Thankfully we had a partial kitchen and could heat things up before collapsing in bed from another long day.