With 4 new roommates, David and I couldn’t eat breakfast in the room like we had done the day before. It was 8:40 AM, which was awesome because it was a normal time to be waking up. We both came into the kitchen of the hostel and prepared our yogurt and muesli like we had done the past few days. It is very hard finding bowls and plates, and silverware. It says that we have to put down a $10 deposit but if we can find stuff here, not that we won’t return it, but it is just a pain to get it.
David and I came to Kings Cross library to work on my journal and also get on Facebook to keep in contact with my life back in the states. I am pretty sure I spent about three or more hours in the library doing these things, and then came back to the hostel for lunch. David and I are trying to spend as little money as possible, although it doesn’t always work that way. We some of the vegetables we had left from the salad the night before and called it a day. It is very difficult sometimes to find clean utensils in the kitchen which can be a bit frustrating. Somehow though we manage everyday to get done what we need to do and it all works out okay.
Today we decided to go to the town of Manly in north Sydney, because Forrest told David and I that the best seafood in all of Sydney was at a place there. He didn’t remember the name, but told us that we couldn’t miss it. So the venture began. We walked out and around, and explored more of the city that I had never seen before. A road just across from our hostel started it out with these pretty hanging things from the buildings in the middle of the road. Once off the “main road” of the Cross there are a lot of very good restaurants and beautiful things to see. Continuing on our walk, we came to a HUGE set of stairs. They are called the Butler stairs and are just beautiful. We continued walking and went through the botanical gardens. We walked around and came to the pond where we saw the eel the first day and the English kid trying to catch one, but there were a plethora of eels this time. There are so many eels that live in this pond it is unbelievable. They are also mesmerizing, considering I probably spent at least 15-20 minutes trying to find eels and just watching them. David somehow continues to stumble upon dead birds, and we found one in the pond with the eels. After seeing that I began to wonder what eels eat since there was a dead bird untouched and also a dead fish untouched in the water. We also stumbled upon two of the coolest trees I have ever seen. One was a fat tree at the bottom and falling to one side so much that strings have to hold it up. There are all pictures on facebook of this. There is also a tree that looked like the tree of life from the Lion King movie. At the corner of the park is a big castle looking building. It is absolutely beautiful with character and it has a black fence around it. It ended up being a government house. How wonderful that their government buildings look like castles, and the ones in the states look like just big white blank buildings. I also noticed that people sit around in the parks and just talk or eat or hang out. It’s like a movie but I love it. I want to (once it’s warm of course) take a picnic there. It would be a perfect place especially at the one hill you can see the Sydney Harbour bridge and the Opera house.
We continued our walk out of the botanical gardens and walked past just rows of palm trees. I’m not sure why but I am really amazed that there are palm trees here. It does get warm, but the winters get pretty cold in my opinion even though it doesn’t snow. It is still crazy to see.
To get to Manly we had to take the ferry since it is across the Harbour. I’m sure there is a bus that runs but it is probably more expensive and not as efficient as the ferry. Right before where the ferries were was an indigenous man playing a didgeridoo. It is the really long instrument that you make noises into. It is like the size of a person if not bigger and it sits on the ground. He had on face paint and really got into it which was pretty awesome. I also stopped into the toilet before leaving and there was a futuristic looking sink that was like a pig trough.
The ferry to Manly had 3 different levels and most of the seats were inside, but there were a few benches every level for people to go and see the view. David tried to run in quick and steal us some seats, but there ended up being so many people coming off and on the outer deck that while the things we knew were going by I couldn’t really see anything. Upon that, it was freezing. It was already a little cold that day, but then to add water and moving across it was too much. I went inside after a few minutes to stay warm but David stayed outside the whole time. I surprisingly did not get sea sick at all though which I think is pretty impressive. The view, from what I could see, was beautiful. There were these rocks flying into Sydney on the beaches and when seeing them I thought about how beautiful it was. Well we passed quite a few of those beaches on the way in and the rocks become even more breathtaking the closer I get to them.
When getting off the ferry, there was definitely more than one restaurant, and all of them had seafood. David and I walked around a few places, and saw some chefs eating. One of them had a pasta dish that looked delicious, so David went up and asked him where it was from so we could get some. He said that it was from wherever he worked, and that they are closed again until 6 pm for dinner. It was 5pm at this point, so David and I decided to get a little snack to hold us over. No other snacks around were actually warm, so we got Asian. We had two spring rolls and some other stuff. Everything ended up being really good so that was a plus. Since we had a possible hour to kill, David ans I jut walked around. Manly is cute and it has just a few shops and places to eat but still just a nice place to walk around. We checked out every menu on the way to the beach, and every menu back. The beach was very nice but by the time we got there it was a little past dusk and it was too dark to really see everything. On the walk back around David noticed a food place with roasted Pumpkin. Pumpkin seems to be really big around here and neither of us have really had pumpkin in anything other than a dessert. We pulled out our change and bought one piece of roasted pumpkin, which ended up being delicious. Pumpkin has this subtle but sweet flavor and it was warm and a little soft and really good.
As we walked back to the place around 6 pm, we saw that their prices were a little expensive and we thought about just splitting a meal. David was in the mood for seafood, but I was really just in the mood for pasta. I think seeing that dude with the awesome looking pasta made me really hungry for it. David wanted to go back to this one place we had passed earlier cause their prices didn’t seem too bad so we went. After searching the menu David really wanted this seafood dinner for two, and I told him I would split it with him as long as we substituted the ‘chips’ (aka fries) for pasta. It all worked out and we got this huge platter of seafood. Prawns, lobster, muscles, oysters, battered fish, the works. It ended up being by far the worst meal I have eaten in Sydney, let alone maybe one of the worst meals I have had in a really long time. Our waiter ended up being from the Czech Republic and was in Australia currently to take classes to learn English. Most of his English was very good, but when I was asking to have pasta instead of chips he became very confused. He asked me, “You want pasta in a bavel?” uh..? I said that I was sorry, but a what? And instead of realizing his English wasn’t particularly good and making a new word, he just continued to use the word ‘bavel’ and cupped his hands. After 3 times of this I just said okay yes. I thought that my pasta would be coming out in a bottle, until it came out and I saw that bavel = bowl. Not close.. but okay.
There are also these heaters that most establishments have that sit outside to keep the people outside warm. They look just like gas flames enclosed by some metal grating. They are actually really warm but I still would not want to sit outside.
Since dinner was all David’s idea and it ended up being pretty bad, he paid for dinner and I just paid for dessert. We went to a place called “Choc late” We ended up ordering the chocolate fondue for two which had milk and dark chocolate with marshmallows, bread, strawberries, and bananas to dip in. We left and saw that the ferry back to Manly wasn’t until 8:05 but David’s watch said it was 7:45 so we had some time. We walked around just for a minute until we figured out his watch was off and we had two minutes to catch the ferry. Luckily we ran and they let us on.
Through the trip so far I have met a lot of people from a lot of different nationalities. English mostly, but also French, Asian, German, Irish, and plenty of other places. However, I have not run into any Americans. I realized that when we heard someone who we thought was American. She was speaking loudly so it wasn’t hard to hear her conversation. For quite some time I thought she was American, until she said she went “aboot” somewhere. Canadian, not American.
After the ferry David and I looked at the map and walked home. Somehow, we got walking on a road that I don’t think we were supposed to walk on. It was a tiny almost non existent sidewalk inside of a tunnel. Luckily, we made it safe and sound and home in one piece. =)
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