The Rocks, The Harbour, and Manly (very) Beach

Yessterday I was lucky to get in touch with one of Sydney's finest tour guides, Loren Scott. She took pity on a poor, lonely traveler and volunteered to come down to my hotel, pick me up and show me around the city. Isn't she lovely?

The added benefit of this is that I had a real live Aussie accent at my disposal to really start nailing down the finer points of my new accent. Yes, Lisa, I can do this.

First we wandered down to a place called "The Rocks." It's where they used to keep the prisoners/first settlers and they turned all the little cells in to stores and all kinds of vendors set up on the street now as an open market. It was quite cute--and brilliant as we say here.



We grabbed some lunch at some sort of all pancakes all the time place (crepes too) which was quite delish, and then went down to the harbor to take a ferry over to Manly Beach where I did some last minute Christmas shopping and saw the second most famous beach in Sydney. One odd phenomenon was the fact that we saw about 100 people wandering around dressed up as Santa. I take back everything I've ever said about people in Australia not celebrating Christmas properly. If this doesn't say Holiday spirit, I don't know what does.



The ferry was nice because you could see the opera house and the bridge from the water view.



The weather had taken a complete 180 turn and was now about 100 degrees and sunny so my backpack was creating major back sweat and, well, my ferry ticket in my back jean pocket (I know- gross) was no longer functional when I went to go get on the ferry, and I was forced to ask the operator to let me through, "Because my ticket was too sweaty to work."



I guess the moral is be careful what you wish for when it's raining, but hey, I'll still take the blinding heat and light over the rain.

Garrett should arrive bright eyed and busy tailed in about an hour so I'm anxious to see him and announce that he is about to go to church with Loren. This should go over well! :) Then she's going to tour us around a bit more, but really, how much can he complain that I'm putting a gorgeous, single young lady in his path?