Manly Beach is 'The Place'

Manly is a suburb in Northern Sydney, located approximately 17km north east of Sydney CBD. Once Captain Arthur Phillip said "Their confidence and manly behaviour made me give the name of Manly Cove to this place". They in this context refers to Guringai people who inhabited the area that time.

Manly is a popular tourist destination for its beaches, foods and drinks. The mode of transport for reaching Manly is by ferry from Circular Quay. It will cost AUD 7.18 (~SGD 8) one way per person to go to Manly, but again one can always save the transport cost by going to Manly on Sundays. It will only cost AUD 2.5 for everything due to the Sunday cap.

Manly Wharf

The wharf itself has supermarket, food kiosks and restaurants. Besides the wharf, there is a small stretch of beach facing the Manly Cove that leads to Manly Sea Life Sanctuary at the end. Besides Manly Sea Life Sanctuary, there stands Manly Art Gallery & Museum. However, it was closed on Sundays and Public Holidays.

The beach and Manly Sea Life Sanctuary

The beach and Manly Wharf

Manly Art Gallery & Museum

The so-called centre of Manly is the Corso, which can be reached by crossing the road in front of Manly Wharf. The Manly Corso is a pedestrian street mall with various shops, restaurants, cafes, pubs and street entertainments. It has served as a connection between Manly Wharf and Manly Beach since 1854. Manly Beach is famous for the Norfork Island pine trees that line up nicely along the shore.

St. Matthew Anglican Church in Manly Corso

The Corso statue

This is how the Corso looks like, I believe the palm trees are imported

Can you see the pines?

There are stone benches where you can sit

Or you can simply lay around and cover yourself in sand

I am sure Australians are crazy about walking. It seems to me that every single place has walking route: coastal walking, bush walking, mountain trekking. Manly has one too. Manly Scenic Walk was opened since 1988 and it covers 10km of walking track from Manly Beach to Spit Bridge by passing through Sydney Harbour National Park and many beaches along the way. The map of the walk can be downloaded here.

Walking further north from Manly Beach to Freshwater Bay, Curl Curl Beach and Dee Why Beach is recommended too. The track is 7km long and at the end of the walk, there is Dee Why Lagoon waiting for you.

We did not have the brave heart to walk 7km or 10km. We chose to walk to Shelly Beach instead, located about 1km south of Manly Beach. It's actually part of Manly Scenic Walk, only 1/10 of it. Next time I'll come back to conquer the 7km and 10km walk for sure.

The start of the walking track

Cabbage Tree Aquatic Reserve covers 20 hectares of marine life at Manly to be protected

The view while walking towards Shelly Beach

What I saw when I looked back

Smile

I don't know how that guy even access the rocks there. Jump, perhaps?

There is a little town 

The Fairy Bowel Rock Pool

Shelly Beach

After finish our 1km walk to Shelly and 1km walk back, we got hungry and searched for another seafood dinner to make up the dissatisfaction we got in Doyles Watsons Bay. We circled The Corso to find a few fish and chips shops and gauged the choice by the crowds. We decided to go for Manly Fish Market. And really, I will keep using this method to find my food choice. It is a delicious dinner we had, especially the calamari rings.

Look for this

The interior, you can either choose from the menu or buy the fresh seafoods from the display

Yum yum!

Love is in the air,
Little Feet

My Newtown Diary

Newtown Station

In front of Newtown Station

This pretty place is called Newtown

Newtown is inner suburb of Sydney, located approximately 4km southwest of Sydney CBD. The main street is called King Street and the train station serving this area is Newtown Station. Currently, this area is considered a locality with many hipster cafes in place.

Throughout my stay in Sydney, I have been here for two times. First time with my primary school friend and the second time with my man. The purpose coming here is always for cafe, cafe, and cafe!

Cuckoo Callay

Cuckoo Callay is just located in front of Newtown Station. It is a tiny cafe with outdoor seating. It is said to have delicious food and great coffee with the beans from Coffee Alchemy. This cafe has enormous good reviews on social media.

The al-fresco dining 

The tiny kitchen

Delicious food

We did not order any coffee but the foods that we ordered were good. My friend ordered Bacon Mac Daddy which seemed to be the most popular item here. I ordered crab croquette with avocado sauce. We both were satisfied with our meals. The only bad thing about this cafe is the waiting time. We waited more than half an hour for our foods. Perhaps that's reason for the everlasting long queue there.

Black Star Pastry

Black Star Pastry is the famous pattissiere who invented the most instagrammable cake in the world, the watermelon cake. There is another branch of this joint in Pavilion on the George.

The bakery cafe

The cakes are sold in slices

Or in whole

The famous watermelon cake, layers of sponge cake, cream, watermelon, strawberry and edible flowers

To be honest, I am not a big fan of the watermelon cake. It looks pretty, I agree, but 2 layers of thick cream are too much for me.

CampoS

CampoS is one of the famous coffee bean suppliers to many cafes here in Australia. It also has its own 7 flagship cafes across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. It is said that the tiny CampoS cafe here in Newtown is the first born, since 1997.

The baristas and the customers

Green is the colour

His happy face seeing coffee

I am a big fan of coffee and CampoS is a good one. The coffee is not acidic and full bodied. However, I prefer something stronger and more bitter than what CampoS offers.

Brewtown Newtown

Brewtown Newton is another famous cafe in this area that serves breakfast/brunch, coffee and desserts. The speciality of Brewtown is the croissant-donut or cronut. In here, they call it brewnut. The cafe is full most of the time and queues are seen quite often. Based on my friend's personal experience, don't come here late in the afternoon to avoid disappointment of running out of your favourite brewnut!

The front of the store

The interior and the people

The pretty pastries

The coffee

Afternoon snack

The brewnut is the winner, crunchy and chewy and tasty and everything good as you can imagine. However, the coffee is quite acidic. I am not a fan with of the acidic hint in coffee, so I will not come back for the coffee for sure.

Bourke Street Bakery

Bourke Street Bakery is a local bakery that started to flourish as a humble bakery in Surry Hills, Sydney. It is now a chain of bakeries everywhere, including Alexandria, Newtown, Parramatta, Millers Point, and the newest in Barangaroo.

Bourke Street Bakery is famous for the meat pies. There are many choices of flavours: original beef pie, wine beef brisket pipe, and many others. I have tried the original beef pie and wine beef brisket pie. Both are good!

The bakery in Newtown

Beef pie and pastry

The iced coffee is good too

Thai Food in Newtown

Newtown is also famous for Thai food. Walking along the main street of Newtown, King Street, you can find a lot of Thai restaurants: Thai Pothong, Newtown Thai, etc. etc. etc. I tried the food at one Thai food takeaway shop besides Cuckoo Callay. It is reasonably priced and pretty good itself.

Green curry and Chilli fish

Bonus: there is a nice park in Newtown too!

My exploration in Newtown is not complete yet.

Love is in the air,
Little Feet

Love for Watsons Bay

Watsons Bay is one of the eastern suburbs of Sydney located approximately 11km from Sydney CBD. Watsons Bay area was inhabited by Cadigal people before the European settlement. During World War II, Sydney anti-submarine boom net was constructed here to prevent enemy from approaching. Three submarines were successfully prevented to enter Sydney Harbour in 1942.

Currently, Watsons Bay is a popular place among the locals as well as the tourists. There are ferry service from Circular Quay and various buses from the city to this place. Your choice.

Either you are taking the ferry and drop off at Watsons Bay wharf or alighting from the bus stop in Military Road, the first thing that you will notice is Robertsons Park. This park is located in between the wharf and the Gap. This park is suitable for playing, picnic, gathering, etc.

Robertson Park overlooking the wharf

It's a really nice place to relax

People, dogs, dogs, people

The main attraction of Watsons Bay is The Gap. It is the ocean cliff of Watsons Bay that faces the Tasman Sea. From the top of the cliff, the view of the sea and the cliff is just stunning. However, there was a tragedy behind this magnificent place. In 1857, a sailing ship 'Dunbar' was wrecked at the foot of The Wreck. The captain of the ship misjudged the cliff as the entrance to the harbour. The incident killed 63 passengers and 59 crews. Some were mutilated by sharks.

The magnificent sea cliff

The view towards the town from the above

The viewing platform

The footpath

The rough Tasman Sea keeps hitting the cliff

Keep walking

Keep taking pictures

The memorial of Dunbar shipwreck

There is a walking track along The Gap that allow people to waltz along the perimeter of Watsons Bay to be back to the wharf by passing by Hornby Lighthouse, Lady Bay Beach, Camp Cove and Laings Point.

We did not walk through the track. Instead we got back to the wharf to purchase our fish and chips dinner before walking along the beach and the town. Doyles is a famous seafood establishment here. There are a restaurant and a bistro/takeaway shop here. We chose the takeaway because we wanted to enjoy our seafood platter by the beach.

Doyles Fisherman Wharf

The menu

Our seafood platter

I found the taste of everything was much better when I first tried it in 2013. I was quite disappointed to find the seafoods were not well marinated. The taste of everything is simply too plain.

Let me move on from my whining, we walked along the Marine Parade towards Camp Cove. It was a fine walk with sea breeze and the sights of pretty houses by the side of the beach.

Overlooking the beach from Marine Parade

The beautiful houses

Camp Cove, where we had our dinner by the sea

The view

It is part of Sydney Harbour National Park

The sea, the cliff, the sky, I am so grateful

After dinner, we continued to walked along Camp Cove to another end to find a small seaside structure and a path leading up. We walked up and found a stunning view and a path towards Lady Bay Beach. Lady Bay Beach is one of the approved nude beach in New South Wales. We did not walk down but just peeked from the top. There were people there!

Camp Cove Beach

Even to just dip my legs into the water, I was happy enough

I love what I see

I wished it was not cloudy that day

Memorial to WWII perhaps?

The view from the top

No regret coming up top

Decision time whether to go down

When we walked back, it was almost 8:00 p.m., the sky started to turn dark blue with a hint of amber. It was not a perfect sunset like what I have expected but it still felt magical, especially I watched it with the man of my life. I felt blessed.

My kinda sunset

Love is in the air,
Little Feet