Manly Ferry ... Oxymoron? Discuss.

On Easter Sunday, we headed out to take a ferry ride over to Manly Beach.  Manly is about a 40 minute ferry ride out of Sydney Harbor and to the north.  Probably a good thing, as much of Sydney was shut-down on Good Friday, and I imagine that Easter would have been much the same, but as Manly is a pretty big tourist draw (and they have a smokin' deal on ferry rides on Sundays for families), everything was open, and finding things to do was not a problem.  Manly is likely the second most famous beach in Australia (or at least Sydney), behind Bondi Beach (which is known to get over 50,000 people on a hot summer day, which is especially impressive since there are only 23 million people in the entire country).

We decided to take a walk into one of the national parks, and weren't disappointed by the views.  After our walk, we enjoyed lunch at a great little cafe facing the ocean, Jeff got pooped on by a seagull (and for some reason I ducked for cover, rather than take a picture), and got some delicious ice cream.

This is how we knew we were on the correct ferry.

The Sydney Opera House seems to glow. 

Beautiful coastline.  No matter how much of the Australian coast
we see, we're still blown away by how beautiful and diverse it is.

The main drag in Manly.

Manly Beach.  It was closed later in the day.  We were hoping it was because
of sharks.  Turns out there were just strong rips.

Main drag in Manly.

Easily 100 foot drop - no guardrail or fence to protect us.

Water dragon - a protected (and perhaps, indigenous) species.

No fence.  No guardrail.  Could have fallen off of the cliff.

Big Bull photo-bombed my picture.

School of Hospitality, maybe.