Saturday 9 August 2014

Australia: coming home

So we came to a last day, with flight home at 10 at night.  It was sad to be leaving - we could have carried on having holiday for a lot longer.  I think staying in an apartment in Manly helped make it feel a bit less like the round of hotel & evening meals out that can get tiring on holiday.

We decided to start the day with breakfast at a spot down on the beach.  It turned out the be somewhat posher than our usual breakfast locations and so we had a job to keep the children quiet enough for the surroundings.  Marisca's polenta porridge was very nice but she said she likes mummy's and daddy's porridge more!


The walk down for breakfast gave us a last opportunity to enjoy the morning beach at Manly.  How lovely, we'll miss the beaches.


A good little walk around the headland was had.  Nice to be walking on something other than boardwalk for a change, to be honest, and good to get a view of the harbour and a pod of whale watching boats out to sea. 


Here's a nicely eroded cliff.


And, although you've not seen the 'lookout point' sign, this is actually a very good replica of the pose in the sign.  Good work, girls.


We then took off up the coast to visit some of Sydney's northern beaches, stopping for lunch at Dee Why, at a nice cafe with a great space for the children to run around as well as toys and books for them while we waited.  Can't remember what it was called, but it was good.

Then we went to the beach (no surprise!).  Happy times playing in the waves and in the sand.  When it comes to beaches, Marisca is definitely a waves person (although it's better when they don't reach her) and Tom is a sand person, enjoying shovelling sand from here to there and back again.  




My last beach photos, of Dee Why beach: beautiful colours, and great waves.



And that was nearly that.  A couple of hours left saw us drive up to palm beach for the sunset, before we endured a busy and increasingly traffic jammed and stressful drive through the city to the airport.


I've said before that we wouldn't have come to Australia if we didn't want to visit our friends.  But we had such a great time, experiencing some great superstar locations like the reef, rainforest, and Byron Bay; falling in with beach, tea, and cake culture; and just having time together doing memorable things as a family.  There's a lot more to see and do in Australia and I'm sure we'll be back some time.

No comments:

Post a Comment