Australia Day 10 - Travel to Sydney

We said good-bye to Melbourne today (which overall was my favorite Australian locale) and boarded the plane for Sydney.  Upon arrival and check in to our hotel (the nicest one we’ve been in, not only b/c of the bottle of champagne to celebrate our anniversary, although that did help) we headed out again for Manly Beach.  Really we wanted to catch a view of Sydney from the water and this, we were told was the best way to do it.  We took some great pictures and the day was just beautiful, one without any rain!!  At Manly we found a nice little beachside restaurant for lunch, walked in some surf, and then found some ice cream and eventually the ferry back.  We meandered in to the Rocks area around Circular Quay (which they pronounce Key) which was the original settlement in Sydney when the First Fleet arrived in 1788.  Now it consists mainly of shops, cafes, and pubs with few historical remnants other than the storefronts look older than the rest of the city (in a nice, well-kept kind of way).  I gave in and bought a pair of Ugg boots here and am still happy with my purchase a week later so I guess that is a good thing!  We walked back to the hotel and were quickly ready for the group dinner at a neighboring hotel and restaurant.   We had done a lot of walking that day and were going to do even more tomorrow so we were both happy for an early night!