Mainly Manly

It was delightful waking up in time to wander down to Manly Beach for the main event of the day: sunrise. As expected, the place was humming with humanity. Many people were on the beach or on the parade, doing something or preparing.

It was a beautiful sunrise, no clouds on the horizon, just the Sun emerging from the sea while a few brave souls were out there, swimming or kayaking.

Not forgetting the joggers, cyclists, tai-chiists, dog-walkers, dog-runners and fellow Sun worshippers of course.

It’s the week of A Taste of Manly, the world famous food and wine festival. I watched the workers setting up stalls and stages on North Steyne and The Corso. Lots of tasty looking street food would be up for grabs later on, along with plenty of wine. Grilled halloumi, mmm. The music progam [sic] looked good too.

Too many photos of the sunrise, so I had to go through and edit them. The best place for this was of course Three Beans, so I had a coffee and a muffin to accompany the procedure.

Back home and my new career as a clothes horse began today. Helen asked me to try on a jumper and I think it looks rather fetching. The model’s pretty hot too.

Helen, Liesel and I went for a walk. The food festival was, we felt, too busy to be fun, as Helen had warned us was likely. The beach was busy too, seemingly a different breed of Sun worshipper.

Liesel and I moved into our new b&b, just a few minutes up the road. Adam was coming home from a week’s work in Frankfurt so it was only fair to give him some space and time to recover. Plus, we didn’t want to be around when he opened his case stuffed with illicit German sausages.

To further distance ourselves from such comestibles, bizarrely, we went to The Bavarian Manly Wharf for a late lunch. We had the best salads, each selecting our own ingredients from the pre-printed order sheet.

To bracket the day, here’s another Manly sunset as experienced from Helen and Adam’s balcony, to which we briefly returned.

The following sunrise was witnessed by Helen and Adam, somehow I slept right through the event.

Helen made breakfast for us: Liesel’s chilli eggs, a recipe passed down through many generations. Plus fake bacon, or fakon. After this, Adam needed a nap. Well, we probably all did but the rest of us had no excuse, we weren’t fighting jetlag.

Liesel and I caught a ferry to Watson’s Bay.

Watson’s Bay is a mere VIII miles from Sydney.

But we weren’t walking all that way, oh no. We had a nice, gentle walk to Vaucluse House. Gentle? Well, it was a bit hilly.

The bridge over Parsley Bay was interesting, very slightly wobbly, but you could make it shake even more if you wanted to. To one side, we could see a small beach at the top of the inlet. To the other, we witnessed people swimming across.

Despite Google Maps, we found our way into the grounds: we didn’t walk the extra miles the long way round that it prescribed.

Vaucluse House was owned by William Charles Wentworth, whose eponymous Falls we visited a few days ago. The house is now set up as it was in his day, the 1860s, including CCTV cameras and barriers preventing you from walking into some of the rooms.

It’s a bit like the Sloane Museum in London, with lots of useful items and many interesting old artefacts, but nowhere near as cluttered.

These books intrigue me, I’ll try to remember to look them up sometime. Maybe even download them onto my Kindle.

After coffee and cake in the tearoom, the walk back to the wharf seemed easier and quicker somehow, which is often the case. We watched people while waiting for our return ferry.

Back at Manly Cove Beach, we sat by the path trying not to inhale (too many of) the pot fumes while waiting to meet Helen. We carried on watching people, some slightly worse for wear, probably too much wine from the festival.

For our final evening meal in Manly, we dined at The Skiff Club. I watched the Sun set behind Helen but the photo of her glowing hair didn’t really work, thanks to the reflective plastic sheet protecting us from the elements.

Adam joined us later, after a long nap. He was due to fly back to work the following day, up to Hayman Island in the Whitsundays.

It did feel odd, sitting outside, albeit under awning, with heating turned on. The sudden change from needing AC to using heaters is quite a shock to the system.

During the night, I remembered why I don’t drink so much beer any more.