Today (Friday) was our last day in Australia; tomorrow we fly from Sydney to Christchurch, New Zealand. We had no set plans for today. We considered going to the famous Bondi Beach, but it would’ve taken almost an hour each way on the bus, so we decided to take a ferry to Manly instead, which is always listed as a thing you should do while in Sydney. It was only 20 minutes each way and a pleasant ferry instead of a crowded bus.

Manly is a beach town on a peninsula. It has several nice beaches and a nice boardwalk that runs between it. It was a beautiful, sunny day, but it was very windy.

There are very cute sculptures along the boardwalk, along with water lizards and turkeys, of all things!

They also have this cool swimming area in the ocean, which is helpful when there are sharks near the beach.

Our flight leaves at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning, which sounds quite reasonable, but we are supposed to arrive three hours before, so it will be an early morning. After exploring Manly, we came back to our hotel to pack up so we will be ready to go in the morning. Then it was down to the harbor for a pizza dinner. There were multiple Halloween parties in the harbor area, so there were lots of young people walking by in interesting and amusing costumes, making for great people watching!

We have enjoyed our time in Australia even more than we had hoped, so moving on the New Zealand is a bit bittersweet. So many people we’ve met here have told us how great New Zealand is, so our expectations are high. Christchurch, here we come!