Bianca Does Stuff On Location: "It's like an orgasm on my face!"

...said the Australian teenage boy next to me on my Coastal walk about this song that started playing randomly on his phone. He really loved the song. I basically felt the same way about the view, but lemme back up.
Today I got an incredibly late start to my day after writing all morning, Skyping with my mom (she was so good at it! First timer!), and spending hours trying to change my flight to Melbourne next week. When I made my Melbourne plans all I cared about was cost, so I booked my trip to leave Sydney late Sunday afternoon and return late Wednesday night. This was weeks ago, of course. Weeks before I'd been introduced to Sydney weekends, before I had beachfront guest bedrooms with my name on them, and before I knew Monday is a holiday so the crew gets a three-day weekend which they are celebrating with a massive party Sunday night. After hours on the phone, the bottom line was it would cost me a billion dollars (seriously $1,000,000,000,000.00) to change my flights to accommodate Sydney weekend fun times. Sigh, goddamn.
My consolation is that I know I'll love Melbourne. But, whine... whatever.
After my morning I needed to get out of the house, and I wanted to get back to Bondi. I found a cool day walk in one of my guide books that goes from Waverly Cemetery along the coast to Bronte Beach, Tamarama Beach, Bondi Beach and on and on for hours. As I was only planning to go from the cemetery to Bondi, the walk actually morphed into another walk I'd been dying to try called Bondi-Coogie Clifftop Walk- I was just doing it in reverse!
Hi, Serendipity, you're so pretty and I like you so much...
I love public transportation in real cities like New York, Chicago, and London, but I don't use it in either LA or Austin because of silly reasons like I have a car and a schedule and am too lazy/impatient to figure it out- but that's me at home. On vacation, I'm Cool Bianca and endlessly patient and not lazy at all, and nevermind I'm lying. The cooler part is true; since I don't have to do anything, everything I do when I travel for pleasure is simply for pleasure, and that includes using public transportation. However, because my experience is limited, every time I hit a new city/public transpo system, I still - because at my essence I will always be me - fumble and procrastinate and usually do everything in the most wrong and time consuming way to achieve something super easy like buying a bus pass. Long story short, it took me an hour to buy my bus pass.
But I did and hopped a bus to somewhere near Waverly Cemetery.
As an aside, THANK GOD for my iPhone and Google maps. I know I used to figure out cities, directions and bus/train timetables using books, big pieces of geographic paper, and a little organ in my skull, but now there's a tiny little genius with glasses and a world-weary look upon his face that lives in my iPhone and is a geographic and logistic god. Let's call him Geo. I tell Geo where I want to go and he tells me exactly how to get there, how many minutes until the next bus, and what time I will arrive. I love how confident he is.
(Yes, I realize its also possible to use Geo in LA and Austin, and I could then give the bus system a whirl there! And reduce my carbon footprint! And do my part to ease gridlock! But ehhhhhpfffffft... I have a life. And I'm sorry, but I love my car. I'm a Texas girl! We love our wheels.)
After a half hour bus ride and a 1.5 km walk, I'm near Waverly Cemetery, but I see a patch of bluer than blue water. Instead of keeping to Geo's plan (he stamps his little foot in frustration), I walk toward the water which brings me to a cliff that I follow to my first killer beach of the day, Clovelly Beach. Its actually more cement than I'd like for a beach to have, but the surrounding cliffs and view is spectacular. It seems to be a major teenage hangout, (and it's where I came across the music lover from my post title) which is actually really cute because they're all laying out on the cement in fun flower patterns. If I were a teenager, this is where I'd be.

Clovelly Beach

From there I double back and follow my original path to the cemetery bringing Geo's blood pressure back to normal. Things are so striking and beautiful here in Sydney that I cuss a lot (Sorry, Grandma H!). My first view of the cemetery actually renders me speechless- and then I said to no one in particular, "Shut the fuck up..."

Waverly Cemetery

If you know me at all, you know I LOVE cemeteries; I prefer above ground and the older, the better. Waverly Cemetery is massive and jam packed with all my favorites: sacred hearts, big huge crosses, family mausoleums, decrepit plots in states of gorgeous crumbling decay... The best part? The whole thing rests on a cliff overlooking the ocean so every resting soul has a killer view. I don't want to be put in the ground, but I'd totally be buried here. I took hundreds of pictures.
Every curve of the cliffwalk to Bondi brought more Holy Shit's and Fuck Me's. I took picture after picture, just trying to do each scene justice and as pretty as some of the shots are (below!) its impossible to capture the scope of beauty you experience here.
At one point I notice the walk go from footpath to paved road. There are massive rocks between the road and the water - essentially the cliff itself - that completely block the view of the ocean, but look easy enough to scale. I'm wondering why use the street at all (because I'm a thoughtless monster who isn't handicapped, old or pushing a stroller) when you can really enjoy the incredible view as you scale the rocks. So I take the road less travelled and feel pretty puffy about the whole thing until I'm forced to scoot on my butt for about half the cliff. Yes, scaling the cliff is easy but the drops from one rock to the next are steeper than they looked as I started and I'm klutzy and carrying a backpack too big for my adventure. I wouldn't have taken the road even if I had known I'd have to crab walk part of the cliff, but that's the point when I realized, ohhh, that's why there is a paved road.
When I ended in Bondi, rather than catching the bus Geo suggested, I walked to Bondi Junction, which is a half-hour uphill hike through the city, and Geo & I conquered the train system. Needless to say, I was cross-eyed tired from hours and kilometers (I'd guess somewhere like 7 miles?? I have no idea.) of walking in the sun and actually fell asleep on my computer as I tried to write all this last night. And damn, did I sleep well.