Manly Beach in the Rain October 9, 2009

By Friday Karen and I had caught up on laundry, repacking for later in the week leaving to go to New Zealand and down loading all of the photos we had taken in the Outback and along the Great Ocean Road. The weather had been cool and rainy for several day, but Friday was supposed to be at least partly sunny. We caught a bus to Manly to spend the day walking along the beach and the shops.

It didn’t start raining again until we got down to the beach area. We found a spot to stand near the water and still under an overhang so we could watch the surfers and we could stay reasonable dry.

There was a fairly good breeze so the surf was at least interesting.

At one point a lifeguard standing next to me pointed out the fin of a dolphin. Actually since Karen likes Shark Week on TV so much (not!!) I told her to look at the sharks.

Apparently Surfers can tell the difference between dolphins and sharks and seemed be pretty comfortable with the close proximity.

After a while the rain let up a little so we walked down the beach a ways and watched this group of guys practice rowing out into the surf.

There was a club house at the end of the beach that had several of these rescue boats which they use for recreation and competition.

It actually looked like it would have been a pretty exciting ride.

It eventually cleared off a bit about the time we needed to head back to Clarice and Jon’s. It was a nice day in spite of the rain.

That evening we took the Ferry into Sydney and went to a performance of the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Sydney Opera house. It poured down rain on the way there, but the concert was very nice. See we do get some culture once in a while, but they won’t let you take pictures, so you will just have to take my word for it.