Manly Cemetary & Balmoral Beach

For the past 3 months (basically the university semester) I have been sedementary and glued onto a chair at home, on the bus or at university. Hence I decided to go on a walk. A long walk. A 11km walk. Though to be fair, there will never be a walk that will be longer than the one in Rome which turned into a 20km walk. Whoops. (I got lost. Majorly).

When I was overseas, the way that I planned my day was by attractions and to get from A to B usually involved walking down roads that seemed vaguely in the right direction. I couldn't really do that with this walk since I do live in the area and although I have never walked those roads before, I am aware of the major roads. Nonetheless, I wanted to visit two places: Manly cemetary and Balmoral beach.




Until New Orleans, I had never visited a cemetary. My mother was very superstitious and I can't recall the exact reason, but it was so extreme that it was 'wrong' to even look at them from across the street. That being said, cemetaries are freaky. The idea of walking near coffins is a little unsettling. I always hope that the coffins are buried within the parameters of the markers and I make sure to stay on the paths at all time. Not the eeriest cemetary I have visisted (Lafeyette would take the cake) but I do think it is odd that a public school was built across from it.




I saw bats. Bats freak me out. Is it because they hang upside down and that is unnatural? Or maybe it's the screeches? I am not entirely sure. All I know is that I saw bats on one tree and then I proceeded to scan the area and saw another 4 trees filled with bats and it creeped me out; there must have been at least 100 altogther.








I also stumbled across a flock of rainbow lorikeets. I was so close to this one, but then it slowly started to edge away from me in a very adorable manner.





Balmoral beach is not my nearest beach and the first time I visited was around this time last year. I had visited the beach  at night after a date. In hindsight it was a perfect first date (cosy Italian restaurant and ending the night with a walk down the beach and star gazing) but with a terrible person. Ah well.

This burger looked good. Until I took a bite. The biggest waste of $10. The chicken was 2mm thick and not only that, it was inedible. I feel that the chicken was either a) left on the counter and dried out or b) it was in the fridge for too long/ stored inappropriately and dried out because the chicken was stringy, leathery and un-chewable. Oh, sure there was maybe 1% of the entire piece of chicken that was edible. Very unhappy.

Also, on my hike up one of the steepest streets I have encountered, some hooligans (I am estimating 18 year olds) threw something at me. Well, I believe with the intention of hitting me but they missed. Not entirely sure what it was, a water balloon or something that had liquid. Calling me a f*cker is not lovely but I do believe in karma. Or as Veronica Mars put it, "I'm gonna run him over with my "karma."" But not really.

My legs are now extremely tired.