While in Sydney, we did a fair bit of traveling on the ferries, and the two longest two trips that we took were out to Manly (the town) and the Sydney Olympic Park.
On the way to the Olympic Park, we got to see a fair bit of the nicer suburbs of Sydney as well as some cool parks off of the river. The Olympic Park itself was interesting, as I had never seen one before, and was massive beyond what I anticipated. But, sadly, we forgot to bring swim suits and thus couldn’t go swimming in the old Olympic pool, which would have been cool. But the best part of this ferry trip was the parks and nature walks around the area. We got to see a fair amount of native bush, as good as you will get in a city, and also a couple of shipwrecks on the river. And, most puzzling of all, were a number of hills with spiral walkways up the top. I presume they are Aboriginal architecture of some sort, but I couldn’t find any information. I thought they were interesting.
Manly was the most stereotypical beach town that I could imagine and was still somehow interesting and worth going to. We hung out on the beach for a while, got some coffee and breakfast (Sardines on toast!), and lazed about. Then we walked back to the zoo via the Manly Scenic Walkway for another ferry home. I highly recommend the Manly ferry ride and walkway to anyone in Sydney with an extra day to spend. It gets you out of the city for a bit, lets you check out a beach and some bush, and walks past some pretty cool restaurants. Plus, we saw a massive pod of dolphins in the harbor while walking around.

The Manly beach. It is both pretty and the exemplar of a beach town’s beach.

No complaints about the views from the ferry.

The Manly scenic walk has some aboriginal rock carvings on a spur trail. Fish and kangaroos were abundant.

I feel the water is always warm enough to swim in. And this was too pretty to deny.

This is a skink. I am amused by the word skink and I don’t think I will ever get to type skink again in my life.

One of the aforementioned spiral hills. I wish I could figure out why.