Spit Bridge to Manly Walk

The weekend following our city tour and walk to Coogee, we decided to take another walk, this time on the north side of the Sydney Harbour. The walk from the Spit Bridge to Manly (another hot spot for surfing) is slightly longer than the Bondi at 10 km long, so we decided to make an earlier start of it.

We took the bus instead of the train so we got to see the city as we left it. No pictures though because I started getting car sick. Bus drivers seem to drive very aggressively.

We got off the bus and started the walk across the Spit Bridge. It was next to a really large mooring area for sailboats.

One of the many sailing harbours in Sydney

Cory wanted to Spit under the Spit Bridge…. I have video but it really isn't exciting. Really.

And then the journey began!

One of the many amazing birds in Sydney. They are so striking compared to those back home.

A closer look

Starting down the trail.

This lizard was way bigger than the picture makes it look.

More fun outcroppings

Looks kind of like we are in the middle of a mountain range rather than right on the water's edge.

This walk was more rugged compared to the Bondi walk, so we were quite excited because it was more what we had in mind when we first started off the previous weekend. And when I say rugged, we still had paved paths or boardwalks but it was... less traveled? More overgrown? less developed? I'm not sure what it was but it was a nice contrast to the weekend before.

A beach?! Say it isn't so!

Examining one of the outcroppings on the walk

Contemplation

We thought we had ventured quite far at this point.

We were wrong.

Another beach! With dogs having fun!

This sign was quite common along this path. We saw it at pretty much everywhere.

Another rock! This one across the road.

There were a lot of starfish along this portion of the trail.
Of course Cory picking it up made all of the kids in the group behind us also want to pick one up.

This picture does not accurately portray the color blue we say. It was amazing.

Had to get 'the point' in.

And Mezz had to climb a rock.

 More contemplation

"Stairway to Heaven"

We walked upstairs for what felt like an eternity. The above picture was taken when we were only about half way up the mountain; although we had no idea it was still that much further to reach the top.

By this point I was hungry. Luckily we had the foresight to pack a lunch after our walk last weekend, so we whipped out the sandwiches I made once we reached what was called 'The Grotto'.

This is me saying "You are really going to take a picture of us eating?"

View from our lunch spot- it's the entrance to the Sydney Harbour

After I finished chowing down, I finally decided to get up and walk around the grotto area. It apparently used to be an Aborigine site of significance.

Look closely for the fish.
This was the only rock carving I could actually see although there were others.

Sydney City is off in the distance!

All of the stair-climbing made sense once we saw how high we really were

More pointing

This was much more exciting when I thought the city would come out larger

We continued our trek up the mountain (more stairs!) and found another open area not too far away with a bunch of college students drinking wine. I thought it was a pretty cool way to spend Saturday afternoon, although I was wondering if it was really worth the effort to walk all the way up there and then have to walk back tipsy.

Turns out there was a car park about 200 meters further up the trail.

Another view of the harbour entrance

From this point, we just had a huge descent back down the mountain. It almost seemed to take as long as the journey up did. We passed through a lot of trees and made it to the farside of the inlet that Manly is on. From there, we had to walk all the way around before we got into the town of Manly when things started to look more like the Bondi walk again.

These signs were the beginning of Cory's obsession with seeing penguins

Finally walking down the main road in Manly!

Manly Beach

Eventually we made it to Manly. It was later in the afternoon, so we stopped for some drinks and dinner before catching the ferry back to the city. Unfortunately, we left too late in the day to get any good pictures of the city from the water, but we knew we'd have more opportunities in the future.

We explored late-night Sydney City and then headed out to the fish markets in the morning. I can't wait until you all see what we found there!

Bondi to Coogee Walk

Our first Sunday in Sydney, we headed out to Bondi Beach for the Bondi to Coogee Walk.

We did not have a particular time to leave but we wanted to give ourselves enough time to explore so we planned on heading out around 10 AM. We headed across town to the train (subway) station that would put us on a direct path to Bondi.

(Side note: Public transport is new to me, so I am always confuddled by the differences between where we catch the transport and pricing, along with how one specifies their final destination so that they pay the correct amount, i.e. Bondi Beach vs. Bondi Junction). 

The CBD was like a ghost town that morning- the only other city I know that I can compare it to would be downtown Jacksonville on a weekend morning. There were only a couple of tourists and others running their morning errands. Apparently most of the people that work in the city live quite a ways away, if Cory's co-worker's are the standard for the area.

Vertigo anyone? This went down like 4 stories

We were like 2/3's of the way down at this point

We found someone!

No rats!!! Or trash!

The only other subway system I can recall seeing is NYC's (I know I've been on the DC Metro but I was too young to remember what it looked like). The train station and train were both SO incredibly clean that I had to take pictures of them. The whole city is pretty pristine compared to any city Stateside.

Double-decker trains

Facing forward

Mezz demonstrating the seat-flipping feature. Our train home was not as modern.

Always the entertainer

Cory's new favorite energy drink (when the Red Bull fridge at the office is unavailable)

We exited at the end of the train line into a bus station. From here there was about a 10 minute bus ride to the beach.

Welcome to Bondi Beach!

It was surprisingly small. I'm interested to see how busy it gets once it warms up

We were kind of at the south end of the beach for this panorama

Toes in the other end of the Pacific!

The water was actually just as warm as in LA

Surfers in the background!

It was not easy to get pictures of the surfers in action as they were quite far off the beach

Bondi from the waters edge

Most of the people in Sydney are not as crazy as those in LA- they did not get in the water without a wetsuit.

Except for these guys in a swim competition

'The Home of Winter Swimming Since 1929'

Like I said, most people were smart about getting in the water. The Icebergs are some sort of bizarre version of the Polar Bear Club. They had centers like this at a couple of the beaches we walked through.

The pool area itself is called a bath and a majority of the beach coves we walked by had one. We aren't still clear on their real purpose, as they are all obviously salt water and some of them didn't look very clean. We aren't sure if the water is warmed before it is pumped in or if it is just calmer water than swimming directly off of the beach.

Pictures from along the walk (we were very picture happy in the beginning):

The above is one of the coves along the walk. There was no beach at this one and though it is not obvious in the picture, there are a lot of rocks right where the water starts to turn white. They had to either risk jumping in the water along the rocks or swim from the cove around the corner in order to reach this location. Also, the waves break all the way up at the shoreline, so I'm a little unclear as to how they stop riding the wave before that point.

Another bath along the walk

I was too scared to stand up along the edge so I army-crawled to look down

Cory- "Where is Bronte Beach?
Me- "That way!"

Me- "Damn, you got me to point again"

Another cliff point

It's not a true Kronheim nature walk unless I point and Cory tries to lift a rock.

Along the path there was this HUGE cemetery. It went along for quite a ways and had obviously been there for a long time as there were washed out sections and a lot of the gravestone covers that had split or deteriorated. We stopped to look at a few gravestones. As the historian of the group, it was my obligation to hold up the group in my quest to find really old ones with cool stories. Below are the only ones that met that criteria before I started feeling bad for holding up the others.

We spent a long time pondering the relationship between the 'Wife of W. Cato' and 'Baby Nellie'

Eventually we turned a corner along a cliff and suddenly came across a community center (for lack of a better word). Along with the 'lawn bowling', they also had a rugby field and park area. Around the corner was also a cool dive spot.

Lawn Bowling a.k.a. Bocci Ball
I took a 'What Commonwealth Games sport are you suited to?' quiz and the top answer was Lawn Bowling
I'm down with that

'Gordons Bay Underwater Nature Trail'

Some point along the Underwater Trail

Couldn't quite figure out if this was a locals' marina or some junkyard. It was up on a beachside hill.

6k and several hours later, we made it to our final destination! You might think 6 km isn't much (it is only 3.7 miles) until you walk it going up and down hills and stopping for half a million pictures. We've learned that doing the touristy thing takes a lot longer than normal. 

Coogee Beach

Our goal the entire trip was Coogee Beach. Were we trying to reach something in particular? No. It was simply the end of one of the designated 'walks' within Sydney. 

When we got down by the beach area, we started to hear a lot of cheering, so of course Cory wanted to check it out. Turns out there were a couple of rugby field's quite close to the beach and there was a game in play. Once we realized once was going on we set out to their stands to watch, but by the time we walked over, the game was done and they were transitioning to the next one. Since we didn't know when it would start and we were all starving, we nixed that idea and decided to eat at a local bar before setting off back home.

We were sure our eyes were deceiving us but this is indeed a public pay phone at Coogee Beach.

Once we were back at Bondi Junction, Allison and I wanted to shop for a bit as there were a lot of stores around and we needed a few items that we either were not able to bring with us or did not think to pack. 

I got a really nice winter jacket while Cory got a new cart for us to lug heavy stuff with (like the one we had for groceries and beach stuff when we lived in Hollywood). We bought a few necessities from Target (the same Target but not). And found some 'cheaper' alcohol to take home. From here it was back another train ride and walk back to sleep off the exhaustion and get ready for the week ahead.