Australia 2011: Taronga Zoo and Manly Beach

The Saturday of my second weekend in Sydney was dedicated to ferry tours. In the morning, the target was Taronga Zoo, certainly one of the zoos with the nicest views in the world. It takes about 15 minutes with the ferry to get to the zoo and you have a great view on the skyline of Sydney from there. The zoo ticket also includes a ride with the “Sky Safari”, a short tramway running above the zoo area. Especially on the weekends, there are regular shows with some of the animals that are trained to do tricks or acrobatic exercises, and I had the chance to watch the bird show and the seal show.
After lunch, the next station was Manly Beach, which is a 30 minute ferry ride north-east of Sydney and the “entry point” to Sydney harbour. Besides endless sand beaches there is also a more stony area that hosts a national park and provides nice views on the ocean. After walking around parts of the “scenic walk” in both directions from Manly Wharf, I spent the evening in Manly to see the sunset on the beach and took the ferry back to Sydney when it was dark. Approaching the skyline in the night was of course another great experience that I extended a bit by walking around along the nightly harbour and the opera house.