We woke up to a beautiful sunny day and decided to go on the Captain Cook Hop On, Hop Off tour of the Sydney Harbour.  The ticket was good for 24 hours and as many stops at the locations as you wanted.  We started at Darling Harbour and our first stop was Circular Quay where we looked for a “virtual” geocache involving the Sydney Writers Walk (we had to pick a plaque and take a photo with it to claim the cache find).  After that we jumped back on a different ferry and met a very nice lady from Yorkshire, England who was in Sydney for her grandsons’ swim meet.  She took this photo for us:

Chris and John on the Explorer Ferry in Sydney

There were 9 possible stops, but we didn’t want to go to the Taronga Zoo and a few of the others were not very big and there was quite a wait for the next ferry to arrive there so  we stayed on the ferry and looked at

Fort Denison

Fort Denison, the Zoo, and Shark Island but we really wanted to go to Manly so we changed ferries at Circular Quay again and headed off to Manly. Manly Beach was quite busy as was the main walking area in town (The Corso) but it was a nice place to visit.  Somehow, we managed to miss the ferry we were going to return on so we decided to find some lunch – we found a really neat little Mexican restaurant called Guzman Y Gomez and had some freshly made tortilla chips and guacomole – it tasted just like what we got in Mexico 🙂

Manly Beach

On the ferry, we were treated to a humourous commentary on the history and quirks of Sydney – our guide Peter was great and had everyone laughing  at his descriptions, especially of the nude beach where he told us to refrain from waving as they may wave back with other body parts.  After a wonderful day on the water (without getting a burn), we left the boat at Darling Harbour and headed back to the condo. On the way back, we came across a small used book store with something different – Blind Dates with a book –

Opera House from Circular Quay

Opera House from the harbour

Opera House from the harbour

Kangaroo Paw flower

Little Black Cormorant at Manly Harbour

And for something kind of crazy – we like to buy Hahn’s Premium Lite beer when we are in Australia. It always amuses us that there are trivia questions under the cap but today’s was the perfect one for Canadians on vacation: