MANLY BEACH, AUSTRALIA

The ferry is really an attraction unto itself since it gives excellent views of the massive Sydney Harbor including a majestic swing past the Opera House where you get to see the more common and impressive views from the water. Thirty minutes later we docked at the Manly ferry terminal. The terminal is a large complex with shops and restaurants and it includes a European market called Aldi, which is the parent company of Trader Joes and unsurprisingly is quite similar. I had reserved a cheap room at a guesthouse off the main road, but it was a rather long walk. I finally arrived and checked in to the Manly Beach House. It’s not on the beach, but on the plus side it had free wireless internet that I could use from my room. The room was small and didn’t even have a sink, but the price was right at $AU35 so I wasn’t complaining. There are about 20 rooms there I think, but most are way down the hall and upstairs while my single room was just off the living room. This made it feel like I was staying at someone’s house.

I found out only after I checked in that they had a “no alcohol on the premises” policy. In some places that would be a problem, but I was fine with it to spend a couple of mellow days and just check out the area while I made my plan to go to Melbourne two days later. I went out right away and walked the block to the beach and then down the sidewalk all the way back toward the ferry terminal. Manly is yet another very pleasant and low-key (at least off season it is) beach community that seemed to be free of trash and slums. I took a stroll through the group of pedestrian streets that constitute the downtown of Manly and came across a used bookstore. I wanted to buy a used New Zealand guide since new books are unbelievably expensive in Australia for some reason.

I found a Rough Guide to New Zealand for about $AU20 and decided to buy it rather than continuing a search for a Lonely Planet. New guidebooks are around $AU40 and I like Rough Guides so it wasn’t a bad deal. I walked back down the main street to the hotel and had a quiet evening reading and watching a bit of telly.

The next day I walked around town a bit more, but mainly down the same streets I had traversed the day before. Manly Beach is damn nice, but I wasn’t going swimming or surfing so I had a pretty relaxing day. I had to print some things out and fax some documents so I did that and then spent some time figuring out my trip to Melbourne.

My original plan was to rent a car and drive to Melbourne and back, but it’s about 600 miles each way so that would be a long haul and cars weren’t cheap. I then thought about driving a car one-way down to Melbourne and flying back, but I found that was also fairly expensive. I checked the web site of a local company called Red Spot and found they had great one-way deals coming the other direction. I could rent a car for $AU15 per day for 4 days from Melbourne to Sydney so I found a fairly cheap plane ticket to get to Melbourne that next day for around $AU70.

I had another quiet night and conserved energy for my flight the next day to Melbourne. The next morning I walked back to the ferry and seemed to have plenty of time, but when I went to the subway station back in Sydney the train to the airport didn’t seem to be coming. I later found out there was a transit strike for that day so many trains were only running once in a while. It was like being back in France, but I had enough time to get to the airport for my noon flight.

I got to the airport around 11 and discovered that my flight was going to be an hour late anyway. I waited around for a while and soon I was in the air. The flight is only about 90 minutes and as the plane got close to the airport I noticed it was pretty rural. We landed and I went inside the airport only to discover this was an exact replay of what happened to me in Kuala Lumpur less than two weeks before. We had landed at a secondary airport way out of town and I didn’t even realize it until I was on the ground. Fortunately, they have a shuttle bus that goes downtown and it only cost $AU2 more than the bus from the main airport does.