If my friend Paul's business interests ever go pear-shaped, a life as a tour guide beckons. From the moment he picked us up to the moment he dropped us back at the airport, he had more than enough ideas to fill the day and drove hours to make sure we saw the best places.
This was our second visit following a brief stop after the Hunter Valley. On New Year's Eve we walked the length of Manly Beach to get a fabulous breakfast at a beach front cafe.
Last Saturday Paul and his wife Lorraine took us from the airport to Botany Bay, Cronulla beach, then up to Bondi for dinner, then further along the southern beaches towards the city centre where we stopped for an ice cream.
On Sunday we took the Manly ferry back to the centre to visit a friend of Moira's family for a BBQ, then to the botanic gardens and an open air cinema with Paul and Lorraine. What a place to see a movie! After a delicious dinner overlooking the harbour, the screen rose out of the water, with the opera house and bridge in the background. It didn't matter what the film was but Manchester by the Sea didn't let us down.
On Monday we took a ferry from Palm Beach, of tv soap Home and Away fame, to Ettalong village on the central coast. And on Tuesday we visited Balmoral on the way to collapsing on the the flight to Melbourne. It goes to prove again that the best way to discover a city is for a local to show you their favourite spots, not just rely on the guide books.
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