My first impression of Sydney is confirmed, it’s a green city; but – to be honest – I did not see much from Sydney as I really enjoyed walking around Manly, a suburb north of Sydney reachable by Ferry boat (30 minutes) and Jet Cat (15 minutes). It looks like a small town by itself and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that only people over a certain income or wealth can afford to live there.

There are many beaches around and hiking trails so it’s pleasant (and convenient) to walk and swim! I kept a track-log and will show you in the future. In fact, the little walk I planned became a forteen hours hike in some towns located North of Sydney.

This tour has been very instructive also:

There were more clever signs, but also less positive; I’ll say more later.

Then my visit to Sydney was limited to a walk around the harbour, opera house, botanic gardens: fantastic!, some parks and some shopping malls in Pitt Street where a 8-10 years old kid really surprised me – by playing some music in the street and asking for change in return. I even asked a police officer if that was common and he confirmed that anyone can get a permit for public performance – no age restriction.

In Sydney’s airport, I was “candidate” for a full security check so they looked for explosive traces on my clothes and my bags: I believe not too many people walk around an airport with a GPS and a backpack full of electronics in airports. New South Wales is behind for now as I left to Launceston (Tasmania) via Melbourne. Melbourne seems to be really dry; everything was yellow and I didn’t see many trees from the sky. In the airport, a sales lady in a store specialized in flying cow had so much fun with her toys that I couldn’t resist to laugh; I liked it! Then I was quite happy to have a memorable seat number on the place to Launceston (1A: sounds like first class upgrade! negative – this aircraft’s size is comparable to Luxair’s Fokker 50: four seats in a row and no space for more than 40 people). My first impression of Laucenston is not that great; but the marina was all-right and just outside the city there are fantastics trails, for example in the area of the Cataract Gorge.

I’m leaving tomorrow morning (very early) for an tour (which I found via the eco-tour label certification authority) that seems to be run by a very small company – last minute booking. I’ll be away for the next few days and probably won’t even answer to e-mails or approve comments (but no one comments anyway).

About my pictures, I did not upload too not many pictures yet; but unfortunately I took too many again! Already 1.7 GB of pictures are waiting to be sorted and geotagged, please be patient – and wait… until the end of my Tasmanian tour.

PS: please accept my apologies for any eventual (probable) mistakes on this post as I won’t have time to re-read it and even worse: I merged and split words and groups of words all the time while writing this post – and eating all you can eat sushi at mikaku for $13.50.

See you later, aligator!

Tired; my luggage is delayed again (looks like I have full membership to the club of delayed bags, ask somekool for verification), grey and rainy, but hey! I’m there, and with a new telephone (that includes a manual in Arabic; no excuse to learn a new language!): Nokia E61; recommended by spoty for less than $300; it’s charging at the moment.

My first impression: Sydney is very green, people seem to like trees as they are everywhere.

I’m about to leave for a small walk in Manly and get some food; then most likely this evening I will go to bed early 🙂

See ya later, aligator!