A Walk in the Park

Wednesday...

I got up early in the morning to take a walk up the hill because I heard that you can see Wallabys up there. I didn't see a Wallaby but I did see a Bandicoot (it looks like a possum but much cuter because its Australian). I also heard lots of birds and saw two bunnies. Laura says that she wakes up every morning to the birds that sound like babies crying. I walked past Laura's school to an old fort. I heard that there are some nice views up there but I didn't get that far since it was raining.

Laura had the day off so she came down to have breakfast with us and then we headed into Sydney on the ferry. While on the ferry we saw our first nutty Australian. There was a woman yelling that another person had put her luggage on her knee. She was also complaining about foreign visitors and the woman complaining had a Chinese accent. She was demanding to see the manager but we never saw the manager come by. We walked over to the opera house and then went through the Botanical Gardens. They are huge, imagine the Boston Gardens but only a hundred times bigger. We saw lots of flying foxes (big huge bats) hanging in the trees. It was raining off and on but I rather have it cool and wet than really hot. Tony's feet were bothering him so we decided to head back to the ferry. We went through a mall where Laura bought a bagel and I had some fish and chips. We took the train back to Circular Quay and then took a walk up to the pub where we had a beer. We got back to the B and B and had a short rest before we had to walk up to Laura's school for dinner.

Laura's school is an old monastery that is located up on a hill overlooking the beach. There is a chapel that is still used for weddings in fact Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban got married there a few years ago. Laura put on her uniform and she looked pretty snappy. The students of the college cook the meals and they also serve you. We had a choice of cold beet soup or ceasar salad and for dinner they had beef or pork. Tony and I had the beef and Laura had the pork. It was good and best of all it was FREE!!! For dessert we had a choice of a berry sundae or Panna cotta which was like a flan. We couldn't see Laura's room but we might have a chance to back later.

Laura was tired so we left her at the school and walked down to the corso to have a cup of coffee. The Corso is like a pedestrian mall in Manly which runs between the harbor and the beach. There are lots of shops, restaurants and bars on that street. Most of the stores were closed because it was after 8 o'clock but we did find a cafe.