Well here we are, one more day and that’s 2024 done and we enter into another New Year in the beautiful city of Sydney.

After an early morning run for Andy who is keeping with his mantra of trying to run 10k a day, we headed out for a walk to Queenscliff beach.

The beach leads on to the Lagoon reserve where most mornings you can spot upwards of 20-30 dogs and their owners taking a dip in Manly lagoon.

From there we walked down to Bower beach, past the chalk painted water temperature mural which is redone every morning by a local artist.

We found a comfortable spot on East Manly Cove beach where people had only started to camp out in readiness for the 9pm NYE fireworks in Manly bay. Thankfully there was still plenty of room for us to get comfortable in the sunshine as we waited for Amelia and Meg to join us for one more afternoon in the sunshine in 2024.

As the afternoon wore on, the East Manly Cove beach or the ‘office’ as its sometimes referred to, due to the amount of people who work there in the sunshine, got steadily busier with more gazebos being erected and the music started to raise in volume.

There was a really friendly party atmosphere that started to build as the hours clocked down for the 9pm family fireworks. We were lucky enough to see them this time last year and know how spectacular they can be, added to the mix of being with friends and family that make the event so very special.

After watching the first set of fireworks at 9pm, we then jumped in our hire car and joined a convoy to Cremorne Point, where we could get great vantage point of the main Sydney fireworks from the Opera house and bridge and the other points along the harbour.

We stayed to watch the 20min display, which as in previous years proved to be a spectacular show and a fitting way to start 2025.

Our return to Manly proved to be a little more challenging at 1.15am with cars being blocked in and traffic queuing every street, but thanks to some local knowledge from Jamie, we managed to avoid most of the blockages and even had time to stop in on McDonald’s for a late bite before returning to the apartment around 2am.

Tomorrow we plan to head over to Coogee and do a NYD walk along the coast up to Bondi, stopping off on the way for swims on the various beaches along the way. It’s going to be a hot one so looking forward to cooling off in the ocean and doing some body-surfing!!