Australia Day 15 – The Manly to Spit coastal walk – Emma and Pete’s Asian Adventure

Friday 23rd December 2022

Pete started the morning by making some pizza dough, as the plan is to have homemade pizza for our supper tonight. Once he’d finished, we set off to get the bus to Manly.

On the way to the bus station, we came across a street food market in Chatswood, very close to our hotel.

Chatswood street food market, in Sydney, NSW, Australia — Chatswood street food market

We wandered through the market and bought an Uyghur Samsa (a bit like an Uyghur version of a miniature Cornish pasty) and some Japanese crab and prawn balls to share.

Our Uyghur Samsa and Japanese seafood balls from the food market

We caught the bus to Manly, and went to the Manly Art Gallery & Museum. It’s a relatively small museum, but is free to enter and was interesting to walk around.

Manly Art Gallery & Museum (in Sydney, NSW, Australia) is quite small but free to visit — Manly Art Gallery & Museum is quite small but free to visit

We then did the Manly to Spit coastal walk. It’s about 10km long, and passes by many small coves and sandy beaches. It was quite beautiful to walk along.

The Manly to Spit coastal walk (in Sydney, NSW, Australia) is a beautiful route to walk along — The Manly to Spit coastal walk is a beautiful route to walk along

There was a lot of wildlife along the route. At times the frogs and insects were extremely loud, and we walked past several very large lizards

There were loads of huge lizards along the way

Further on, the route leaves the coast and goes further inland. It passes by an old site with ancient aboriginal engravings. Some of them were quite difficult to make out, but it was still interesting to see.

The route meanders inland and goes past some aboriginal engravings

As the path returned to the coast, we passed some very cool looking rocks.

When we reached the end of the Manly to Spit coastal walk, we crossed the Spit Bridge then caught the bus back to Chatswood. We walked back to our hotel via Gelateria Gondola Chatswood. To Pete’s delight, we found they did a Banana (with Nutella) flavour. So obviously we had to have a scoop, along with a scoop of pistachio. It was excellent ice cream, probably one of the best we’ve eaten (which explains their 4.7 rating on google maps)

Beautiful banana and nutella and pistachio gelato

After our ice cream we headed back to the hotel to chill for a couple of hours, before Pete made us some homemade pizza and garlic pizza bread for supper which we enjoyed with a couple of glasses of Australian red wine. A lovely end to a very relaxing day.