After doing a few last minute things in Christchurch this morning, we flew out of New Zealand at 3:45 pm on a 3 hour flight to Sydney, Australia. I was sad to leave NZ, but I guess there might be worse places to go than Australia, eh? I got to see The Prestige for a second time on the airplane, and if you haven't seen that movie I would highly recommend it.
After picking up our bags and going through customs, we sat around a bit until we heard a loud roar coming around the corner. It was our airport shuttle service, a group of guys driving Harley-Davidsons. Each of us got to ride on our own personal Harley with a driver. We rode all around Sydney on our way to our accommodation at Manly Beach. It was awesome. Those bikes are incredibly powerful. I'm not a huge fan of motorcycles because of all the stories I hear from my dad in the ER, but it was fun to do once in my life. There were a light of great sights along the way. We even saw the world's largest ocean liner The Queen Mary II along with another massive ship The Queen Elizabeth in the Sydney harbor, which apparently is a very historic event. People were everywhere to witness it. Here are some pictures.
Helicopters filled the sky above the harbor.
Our accommodations we were 2 giant apartments across from the beach. Each had 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, kitchen, dining room, living room, etc. It was a nice break from camping all the time. Below is a picture of the place. After we got situated, we just walked around the town and got some dinner.
The next morning I got up really early (there was a 2 hour time change), and I went out for a run by the beach with a couple other guys. It was 6:30 am, and the town was already bustling. It seemed like everyone in Manly Beach was out either exercising near the beach or going to work. A little later I had to start working on the class material for my SCUBA diving certification. Philip was also doing the certification, and basically all we had to do was work on the chapter reviews in the textbook. It's pretty basic. After lunch I went with Andy, Philip, and Garner to rent surf boards. I haven't done a lot of surfing, bu I was able to catch some waves and get up a few times, which I was excited about. It was a lot of fun.Manly Beach is very beautiful, and the town is quite pleasant. Here are some pictures.
I actually went into the city with Andy and Garner on our third day in Sydney. To get there we had to take a 30 minute ferry from Manly Beach to Sydney, which was pretty scenic. Here are some pictures I took from the boat.
We walked around the city for a little while and then went to the Sydney Opera House, which is beautiful as you can see from the pictures above. I thought about going to see a show, but there weren't any playing tonight in the main theater. I'm not really interested in theater, so seeing a show in the main theater would have been the only reason for me to go. I was really tired after going to the opera house for some reason, so I took the ferry back to Manly. I did some email and uploaded a few pictures, and then I just relaxed for the evening. Here is a photo of Sydney from the opera house.
1 comment:
Good post.
Post a Comment