Manly Beach:
We spent Christmas Day on Bronte and Bondi Beach with the masses who flock to the beach on Christmas Day wearing Santa suits, reindeer antlers and even bring their Christmas trees down to the sand with them. We even braved the cold water and crazy waves and went for a swim... I mean we were in Australia we HAD to! Or so I was telling Brad. When it came time to go all the way in I was chickening out so Brad literally picked me up and threw me in. Caught me by complete surprise. So we had a very nontraditional Christmas Day, but loved every minute of it.
Bronte:
We had planned to easily hop on a bus directly out to Bondi Beach, but we did not expect all of Sydney to also have this idea. We stood at the bus stop for over an hour as bus after bus went by us, not even stopping because the bus was already full of Bondi beach bound Christmas-ers. I was loosing patience fast and we were about to take a very expensive cab ride out there when a nice Australian man told us another way to get there via Bronte Beach. This ended up being awesome advice. We hopped on the bus we thought (and hoped) would take us to Bronte and it eventually did. This beach was beautiful! We needed some down time before trying to continue on to Bondi, so we picked out a spot on the sand and stayed awhile.
We asked the nice Australian at the lunch cart how to get to Bondi and she told us to follow the cliffs and we'd get there in about a half an hour. We joined the rest of the walkers up on the beautiful path on the side of the cliffs and had the most amazingly beautiful walk ever. We every turn we had a view more beautiful than the last and another little beautiful beach came into view.
Eventually we came to Bondi and there was no mistaking it. This beach was very big compared to the others ... and it was packed! Really something to see. The surfers were out, the sand was packed with people in their crazy Christmas outfits and the grass behind the beach was full of families and friends having picnics and bar-b-q's. Such a fun and strange combination of Christmas celebration and college beach week. Again, we found a spot on the sand (a bit harder this time) and then went for a long stroll down the beach to just take it all in. It was totally sensory overload and lots of fun people watching. Even with all the Santa hats I still kept having to tell myself "It's Christmas. This is Christmas." It totally did not feel like Christmas Day! But, it was a total blast and an amazing new experience.
Needless to say Sydney's beaches were unlike any beach I've been to before and I feel so very lucky that we had this opportunity. Someday I still hope to get to do the Great Barrier Reef. Someday I hope to go back. Australia, you've totally impressed me and I do quite think I'm in love. I liked Australia HEAPS! Heaps, meaning a lot or a great deal, is my favorite Australian term, and they have quite a few fun ones.
I think I'll make this my last Sydney post. I could easily do many more posts on the food we ate (Brad ate and liked Kangaroo), all the flowers that were blooming, and the countless other cool things we did and saw - we saw Tron in 3D on the "worlds largest IMAX" and spied on the city below from the Sydney Tower AND had a lot of fun passing through Korea on the way there and back. But, I hope you enjoyed getting to see and hear a little bit about our amazing trip. We did a great deal more than I've posted on here and in prior posts, so if you have any questions or need suggestions let me know. I hope you all get to experience Australia some day, it is worth the trip!
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