Manly and Sydney

Little Penguin at Manly Sealife Sanctuary

Little Penguin at Manly Sealife Sanctuary

Very cold last night, the temperature dropped below double figures so we were both wrapped up in extra layers under the duvet ! Another bright sunny day though today which makes up for it and the wind dropped a bit so today felt warmer without the wind chill.
The temptation to wait until the sun managed to warm everything up won out this morning so we had a bit of a slow start before heading into Manly on the bus. We visited the Sealife Sanctuary while we were there, it’s aimed more at the “Finding Nemo” age group than adults but was interesting nonetheless. The sea horse aquarium was really good and the “Little Penguins” were very cute. The breeding programmes mentioned on their web site didn’t seem to get much of a mention though.

A Seahorse at Manly Sealife Sanctuary

A Seahorse at Manly Sealife Sanctuary

From Manly we took the ferry to Circular Quays and, unlike the last time I took this ferry on 2005, it managed to complete the trip without crashing into the pier !
We took in a few of the sites around that part of Sydney, the usual tourist things I guess. A walk around the Royal Botanic Gardens and the Opera House first so we could justify second breakfast afterwards. After second breakfast we went for a random walk around the rocks (the oldest part of Sydney at the foot of the bridge).
We found “The Big Dig”, an archeological dig carried out when the YHA hostel was being built. Pam had mentioned wanting to go to it a while ago and it was a lucky coincidence that we kind of stumbled across it during our random wander.

Royal Botanic Gardens

Royal Botanic Gardens

Tomorrow we’ll head into Sydney again to visit Darling. Harbour and some of the attractions around it. After that we’ll probably have had our fill of being in a city and be ready to head for Lane Cove on Saturday morning.