Manly Men!

Yesterday, Matt and I took the ferry up to Manly, which is about 10 miles north of the City. The Opera House is right next to the ferry pier, which is located at Circular Quai, pronounced "key" in these parts. Across from the Opera House is the ANZAC bridge, a landmark of Sydney. So, within 5 minutes of leaving the pier, I had a marvelous view of both.

Sydney Harbor has GOT to be one of the nicest, cleanest, most beautiful harbors in the world. Like Seattle, it has ferries running every which way all day long. And like San Francisco, the shores are clustered with the bedroom communities that serve Sydney. To say it's picturesque is like saying Babe Ruth was an OK batter. Bit of an understatement, in other words.

Manly, once we arrived about a half hour later, is one of those places that, after about 3 minutes ashore, a person is apt to say: "Oh, yeah. I could live here." Quaint, clean, bustling but not in the way the City is. Bayside beaches. Oceanside beaches a quarter mile away. Tons of small hotels, eateries featuring food from all around the globe, and pubs with a dozen or more beers on tap. Above is a picture of Matt on the pedestrian mall between that runs between the harbor and the ocean.

Lots of surfers at the ocean beach. The place is quite a tourist destination but not a honky-tonk, trinket driven economy as we are used to. Looks like a most pleasant place to live.

Sydney Harbor is crisscrossed by multiple ferries that are part of the public transportation system. On the way back from Manly, we took a ferry across to Neutral Harbor and to Darling Harbor area near where Matt and Janice live. At one of the ferry stops in Darling Harbor, excerpts from the diaries of early settlers in Australia are inscribed on granite slabs. 

Here are some photos:  Neutral Bay and Darling Harbor