At 10 a.m., the kids were at my place, all of us taking the bus to Circular Quay (pronounced like the English "key"). Mom isn't used to buses, I noticed, haha. We took the ferry to Manly. That ferry takes a pretty scenic route, between the Opera House and the Harbor Bridge, so Dad went wild taking pictures (rightfully so). Mom got a little dizzy from the extra-fast ferry, so she just sat there for a bit. Once there, I picked up some lunch at Coles and managed to find a picnic table in the shade somewhere at Manly Beach. It was still quite chilly in the shade with a bit of wind. Further on (about a kilometer away), there was a thick cloud of smoke. Fire?? After lunch, I wanted to continue walking along the beach, but they still had to book tickets for some activities on their trip, and apparently, that wasn't possible on the boat... It took quite a while. But okay, after a good half hour of fiddling with tickets, we were allowed to continue walking, right? So, I walked along the sea and went to a beautiful rocky spot where I'd seen big waves crashing up the last time, but uh, the water was rather still, so bad luck. I walked around the corner a bit where there was a sort of tunnel through the rocks, and beyond that, it was also very beautiful! Then I walked back along the sea and got yo-chi, nommmm. The others enjoyed it too, although Dad didn't really get the 'yo-chi experience' because he just got a cone. Along the way, we saw some Australian plants and animals like banksias and cockatoos. I thought it was quite funny to see them all excited about it; I've seen so many by now, haha.
After the ferry back, we looked around the opera house, having never really been up close before, strangely enough. Of course, we saw some bridal couples having photoshoots again; it seems to be the place to be. We went back down the stairs and walked to the other side of the bay, where we climbed more stairs for the Harbour Bridge. My plan was to watch the sunset here, but the weather had other plans; unfortunately, it was quite cloudy. Still, a beautiful view. Oh, and across from the opera house was a massive cruise ship, complete with a slide and workout speakers and screen that we could still hear/see from our vantage point. They have money to spare, or something. We decided to eat instead of waiting for the disappointing sunset, so we took the tram to Chinatown and ate at Mother Chu's Taiwanese Gourmet. It was delicious! I had fried rice with beef, Arthur veggie noodles, Dad also had fried rice, and Mom had chicken curry with rice. I also had Taiwanese sour plum lemonade, but it wasn't really that good. After a long day, I walked home and chose my internship! It's about stem cells and how differences in translation (genetic code into protein) affect cell fate (what kind of cell it becomes), very interesting!
