2023 Alaska, Asia, Australia, Arabian Peninsula Trip
Day 84/105 - Sydney, Australia, Day 5, meeting friends for breakfast
It always makes the world seem smaller when you can be halfway around it and still meet friends for breakfast. That's what we did today.
Our neighbors on our world cruise, Rob & Deb, put together a fairly epic journey across two different Celebrity ships. They flew to Seattle and cruised through the South Pacific to Sydney and flew home for about a week. Then they flew to Rome, boarded another Celebrity ship that was being repositioned, and sailed into Sydney this morning. They are just here for a few hours as the ship leaves here this afternoon for Auckland. It will then work its way back to Sydney and they will fly home. Quite the trip. As they were telling us about it some months ago, we figured out that today, December 9, we would both be in Sydney. we should meet up!
We made the 20-ish minute walk from The Grace to Circular Quay where the Celebrity Edge was docked. You can always find interesting things to see when walking around Sydney.
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| Arlona immediately recognized this as a Calder sculpture - it's called Crossed Blades |
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| We both thought this resembled a dinosaur |
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| A peek at the Sydney Harbor Bridge |
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| The Sydney Harbor map |
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| The best thing at the Museum of Contemporary Art - it is right across from the Circular Quay dock |
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| Celebrity Edge with our friends, Rob & Deb aboard |
Even though they are continuing on with the cruise, protocol required them to disembark for at least 45 minutes for Customs and other such nonsense. They got off and we met up and headed to breakfast.
City Extra is a 24-hour cafe right in Circular Quay. Interestingly enough, it is also used by a luggage storage company for cruise guests. When Rob & Deb were here on the first part of their journey, they stored bags here. No bag storage today, it was more pancakes!
We enjoyed some food and catching up on all of the travel we all have been doing. By the time we finished breakfast, as promised, the temperature had already soared to 96°F and was climbing. Deb opted to return to the Edge as she does not handle extreme heat well. We bid her farewell. Rob came with us as we caught a ferry and headed to Manly Beach.
It was only after arriving in Manly that we realized that we had forgotten to get a photo with the four of us. Doh! I guess we were all in the moment, so that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. But, we weren't going to miss out twice.
Manly Beach is one of the more famous beaches in Australia and was home to the world's first-ever surfing competition in 1964. Today, you can find swimmers, surfers, sun worshippers, and beach volleyball players flocking to Manly Beach. They were all there today.
Of course, with water comes Arlona, testing it.
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| She reported it felt like it was refreshing in perhaps the 70s |
With the cool ocean water and strong inward breeze, even with the high ambient temperature, it was actually fairly comfortable at the beach. We sat for a bit watching men's and women's beach volleyball. There appeared to be a tournament going on with 18 or more courts all in action.
Eventually, we made our way back to the ferry terminal and treated ourselves to a little gelato. Then we caught the fast ferry back to Circular Quay and the walk back toward the hotel. We decided that with the late breakfast, a late lunch in lieu of dinner was in order. We both were in the mood for some comfort food and Crazy Dog nailed it.
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| It is about a block north of our hotel |
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| CBDogs with cheddar, BBQ sauce, house sauce, and bacon - yum |
We got back to the hotel and promptly hopped in the shower. That felt great after a hot and sticky day. We ordered a bucket of ice from the front desk and plopped in the bottle of wine we had from the cruise so that it could get nicely chilled. We figured tonight was a good night to sit and relax a bit and enjoy a bottle of wine.
Tomorrow, we have a tour scheduled at the Sydney Opera House at 10:45 A.M. We will likely also head over to the Art Gallery of New South Wales for a walk around. While today pushed 100°F, tomorrow is supposed to top out around 76°F. Perfect.
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