Our last day in Sydney, Kevin wanted to head back to Manly beach and get some surf in. Sal had found a 9.7 km hike taking us around the Sydney coastline to Manly, called the Spit Bridge to Manley Scenic Walkway.
It would be perfect! Except it wasn’t.
9.7 km is about 6 miles. Or, two loops around Greenlake. It takes about 45 minutes to walk the lake times 2 is about 2 hours. We figured it would take us two, maybe three hours, including our little excursion to the light house. You can probably see where this is going. 6 miles around Greenlake and 6 miles hiking take significantly different amounts of time.
Our leisurely scenic hike turned into speed walking, let’s-get-to-Manly-before-it’s-dark-so-Kevin-can-surf, rush, but-look-at-the-scenary, no actually, hurry-up, hike.
This is how the hike went:
Oh, this is lovely. Seattle should have big long trails like this. Aww, look at the blue soldier crabs. How cool. Look at the view from this ridge. Where are we? Are we even close to the light house? Should we go this way? There’s some people, I guess we’re going the right way. Sad, the light house isn’t that exciting – the view is nice though. Look at the waves crashing on the rocks; beautiful. What time is it? Shouldn’t we be there by now? How much more do we have to go? Are we there yet? I think this is taking longer than we thought, let’s pick up the pace. We gotta pass that old man. Maybe he knows which way we should go. Why did we take the “short cut” that wasn’t a short cut? How is the old man ahead of us now? We should have followed him. Let’s go down around the water, it’s low tide, that will save us some time. Look there’s the old man again. He went the other way. Crap, the only way back to the trail is to trespass through private property and three fences! Are we there yet? Where did the old man go? Don’t worry Kevin, we’ll get you there. We really should have packed some water. I thought this was only 6 miles? Lunch would be good right now. Water would be really good right now. Look there’s Manly, just around the bend. And another bend. And another bend.
Whew. I’m tired all over again just thinking about it. We got Kevin there in time to get his surf on in Australia. Sal and I recovered by gossiping on the beach. I didn’t think Sal would try to kill us with hiking twice in one trip – but she did. Lucky for her it was a stunning walk – even though hurried.
Our final dinner in Sydney, Sal and Fede took us to their neighborhood casino. For those of you that know Sallie, the foodie, this destination is quite strange. But it’s one of their favorite spots and we’re so glad they shared it with us. To end the evening and our trip we sampled Tim Tams (**update: apparantly Pepperidge Farms makes knock off Tim Tams in the States. Kevin taste tested them side by side and the Pepperidge Farms ones didn’t stand up to the test.) and visited just a little while longer.
We’re headed home tomorrow and we’re a mix of emotions. Sad that our trip is coming to an end. Not just any trip, our honeymoon. The honeymoon is over. And we’re sad to leave our dear friends Sallie and Fede.
But we’re excited to be home.
Cake & Ice Creams 