Sigh. I'm so far behind posting!

We woke up on Saturday, October 24, and unexpectedly still had sunny weather. We quickly made plans to go visit Manly Beach, though we delayed it briefly to stop at the Potts Point Farmers Market. There were only two or three vendors selling fresh produce, but I didn't mind since Fratelli Fresh has such good produce on a daily basis. The rest of the vendors were selling value-added products like bread, jams, hot foods, soaps--one in particular was entirely gluten free food! I kept looking at their blackboard just to double-check what I was seeing was real. We bought some meat pies, a roll, and a couple cupcakes to try. The roll was a disappointment, very eggy. I plan to turn it into bread pudding or french toast where the egginess will work well. The cupcakes were rich but tasty. My favorite was the chocolate hazelnut. It managed to be fluffy and no gritty or sticky aftertaste. Mom wants to save the meat pies for me, so you'll get a review of those in another week. I'm excited to try meat pies. One of my previous co-workers (Mike) is from Australia and talked longingly of those and Timtams when we used to work together. Jon is decidely not a fan, but a pie crust + meat sounds pretty good to me. I'll need to be sure to swim that day! [Despite what Susan says here, I actually like the pies. The good ones. But they vary in quality. I recommend Boomerangs in… Austin, Texas. :D - Jon]

Many of the trees in the park at Potts Point had knit coverings--perhaps the same people who covered the pole downtown.

It takes about 30 minutes by ferry to get to Manly from Circular Key, and it gives you a nice tour of the outer part of Sydney's harbours. We passed a bunch of sailboats sailing but clustered together. My theory is that they were racing, otherwise I can't imagine why the boats would want to be so close together. There was an excellent view of the CBD skyline as well. The boat sways a lot towards the end since you cross the mouth of the harbour that heads out to the ocean. It was rather exciting.

We walked from the ferry dock to the beach through the little downtown. There's a Coles that seem to span several blocks--it must be huge inside. Coles, unlike Kohls in the US, is a popular supermarket chain. I'm guessing that it is considered slightly downscale compared to Woolworths because there's a Coles at Kings Cross but a Woolworths in Potts Point. That said, I've found a lot of gluten free food at Coles, sometimes a better selection that Woolworths. The Coles at Bondi Junction in the shopping mall next to the train station has a really large selection of gluten free foods. It's easy to get there from Potts Point; you just get on the train and go two stops, walk out the train station, and you're practically there.

Even though it was sunny at the beach the wind kept things chilly, and Mom and I left our fleeces on. We sat on a bench next to the beach and again enjoyed the people watching. There was a class of people learning how to surf, and some teenage guys clumped together, just hanging out. They started out very far to my right, just standing around. Many of them had their arms crossed the whole time; they must have been cold in just their swim trunks but didn't want to be lame and put on more clothes to stay warm. Periodically a girl would join the group and then eventually wander off to the right. Not surprisingly the clump of guys slowly migrated to the right, following the cute girls. Occasionally a boy and a girl would break off and have one of those conservations where one person leans, then the other, then a little arm touching, and then the girl flounces off. Hours of entertainment.

 Eventually, though, we got up and walked up the beach because we wanted to visit the lookout at the end of it. We saw something a little bizarre: kids paddling out in the ocean on surfboards, and then just paddling right back to the shore, kicking their legs in the air. We have no idea why they were doing that.

There were lots of people snorkeling at one part of the beach, and when we walked out to some of the rocks on the edge of the beach we saw why. There were little crabs everywhere! Well, so long as we sat still we saw the crabs. There must have been even more marine life under the water. We sat for a long time at the rocks, pointing out crabs to each other. I'm sad we never saw any larger than 4 or so inches. We also passed some crazy large lizards on walk over to the rocks.

If you ignored the beach full of surfers and people in swim suits, you could almost imagine we were along the California coastline near Monterey.

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