The Coastal Walk

 Friday started out a little cloudy with an expected high temperature of about 25°C, which seemed just right for walking along the seashore. We had decided to do this so we could see something different from the inner harbour and the Rocks area, and the plan was to take the bus out to Coogee Beach, where this part of the walk starts, walk back to Bondi Beach, take a cab to Watson's Bay for a late lunch at Doyle's Seafood Restaurant, and take the ferry back to Circular Quay.

We started the morning with breakfast at one of the places on the Quay, since we had to go there to buy our combination bus/ferry tickets anyway. We both had fairly large omelettes and toast and then started off on our way.

The bus system is actually pretty easy to use if you know where you need to go (and especially if you have help from the concierge), and most of them end up at Circular Quay, so we had no trouble finding the bus. We were the last ones off at Coogee and the driver was quite helpful in pointing the way to the Coastal Walk path. We started at 10:55 a.m. and expected the walk to take about 2 hours or so at a leisurely pace. It certainly was nice, following the cliffs, skirting some of the neighbourhoods on the south side of Sydney, and passing through a number of beaches and coves. Here are some pictures:

The Walk is on top of the cliff by the white fence

Coogee Beach

The Waverely Cemetery, the most picturesque in the world.
Headstones date back to the 1930s

Bondi Beach from the point

By the time we finished we were sure that the 25° was over 30° and the clouds had all but disappeared. Even though we had both taken water bottles that we refilled along the way at the public fountains (there are even dedicated taps for filling bottles - great idea for this kind of weather), we were both pretty wiped out. Nobody told us that there was NO shade anywhere on the walk, and, from the photos you can see that there are numerous staircases and inclines, so even though we didn't rush at all, and took some time to rest, we were never so happy as when we found the dark, relatively cool interior of the Bavarian Cafe at Bondi and ordered something very cold, very large and very wet to rehydrate our bodies.

At that point it was only just 1:00, but neither of us was hungry, so we abandoned the idea of Doyle's (there will be other opportunities before we come home) and just took the bus back to Circular Quay, a ride of about half an hour. So we did manage to finish the walk in about 2 hours. We determined later that we walked about 8.8 km, or over 5 miles! Here's the map:

We walked the entire yellow highlighted
section! Looks longer than it felt.

On the way back to the hotel we decided to stop for a light lunch and discovered a little place on a street called Nurses' Walk. It was so named because it ran along the back of the first hospital in Sydney.

The explanatory signpost. The verandah in the
background is where we had lunch.

While we were eating, these two wild
parakeets flew in looking for a handout.
They hung around for a few minutes and
then took off. Gorgeous colours!

In the evening, we thought we'd use the ferry tickets (that are good until 4:00 in the morning on the day after purchase) and go over to Darling Harbour for dinner. We wandered along Cockle Bay, which is the real mecca of harbourside dining in the city, and found Blue Fish, a restaurant we had been to on our last visit, and had a delicious fish dinner. We took the ferry back and got these beautiful shots of the bridge, opera house and Luna Park on the way:

The main entrance to Luna Park, Sydney's
amusement park right by the bridge

And so ended yet another day that ended up a lot more strenuous than first expected. But nobody can say we're not getting our exercise. Step count: just short of 21,000 according to our FitBits!! Saturday was our day in Hunter Valley Wine Country. We were being picked up for the tour at 7:30, so we weren't up for too long once we got back to the room.