Manly and Blue: First Days in Sydney!

On our first day, four friends and I decided to go to Manly Beach, which is a popular beach a 40-minute ferry ride off of the Sydney Harbour. A walk from our hostel led us to Circular Quay, which is the area right next to the Sydney Opera House and gives the BEST views of the Sydney Harbour. We got there, and I finally got my first view of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. It was so exciting! Our ferry ride to Manly was spectacular as well, as we got to see all of the Harbour and an up-close view of the bridge and the opera house.

Compared to the beaches I had been to at Straddie and at Heron, Manly Beach itself didn't come close, but I really enjoyed the surrounding areas. My friends and I spent the morning lazing around on the beach that eventually became crowded with tourists, and then we took a walk around the rocky shore, which gave beautiful views of the ocean. There was also a cute boardwalk area with street performers and a market where I bought some earrings made out of billiard balls.

That night, I went with two friends to see the Sydney Symphony perform a Nat King Cole tribute at the Sydney Opera House. This was super exciting - we dressed up, went to a fancy dinner beforehand, and had time to do a bit of exploring around the opera house. Our explorations did not do it justice though - I will definitely be returning here when I come back to Sydney in December to do a tour of the Opera House. I think I want to live there. Anyway, the concert was a lot of fun; it ended up turning into a dance party for people over the age of 50. While I would have ideally seen the symphony play classical music, I had a good night nonetheless.

The next day, a large group of us took a two-hour train to the Blue Mountains, which are west of Sydney. The Blue Mountains aren't that blue, but it's basically a mountain range with a huge gorge of rainforests in it. Its most famous site is the Three Sisters, which are three humps of sandstone that got carved out from the mountains. A group of us did a hike all the way down a huge waterfall, which included a lot of steps downward. This became unsettling at one point, because when we thought the path would start leading us upwards, the trail kept leading downwards and we knew the for every step downwards, we'd eventually have to take a step upwards. Still, it was a really nice hike with a lot of great lookouts to view the scenery.

When we finally reached the stairs to go upwards, we apparently climbed 1058 steep steps one after the other to climb up the cliff. Oh, and then we ran about a mile uphill to try to catch a train that was leaving in ten minutes, after about 30 seconds rest from the stairs. I was actually really annoyed about this, because I wanted to stop and take in one last view of the mountains and take time to fully appreciate the long hike we had just done. I also knew there was no way we could have made that train (we didn't), so it's a shame we didn't get to enjoy the Blue Mountains as we were rushing away from it.

Still though, it was an AWESOME hike. Not quite as hard as the 12km one we did at Wetherby, but just as rewarding.