I’m a planner. Shocker for those who know me, but I have a thrill for adding locations I want to visit, organized on a map for me to reference while traveling. For Sydney, I was trying to give us plenty of options on what to do depending on how we were feeling when we landed but one area I did not imagine we could fit in was Manly Beach.
We landed at 7 am, got to the hotel around 9 am and hopped on a whale watching tour at 10:30 am. On the tour, we went from Sydney Harbor to Manly to pick up more guests. I had a bright idea, we can potentially hop off at Manly on the way back and it worked! We hopped off when the tour was done because we knew how easy it would be to hop a ferry back to Sydney Harbor.
We walked in, quickly greeted by the bartenders and ordered some food. I had read we needed to try the fish and chips but I also needed something a little lighter, so I opted for the roasted cauliflower as well.
It took about 15 minutes for the food to come out piping hot. Besides lots of coffee, we had not really eaten all day which was not a smart decision. We even denied beer as our food’s accompaniment! Luckily we noticed at all the breweries, they had water on tap and plenty of it to go around.
The fish and chips were delicious. Either, we have never had proper fish and chips or anywhere near us in the south is doing something wrong. I would eat these chips all day long. I later found out that its potentially a turmeric seasoning that does it!
The roasted cauliflower with hummus was delightful. It was a smart decision to counter the fried fish and chips. I’m not a huge hummus fan, but I’m very glad we got both dishes.
Finally, it was time for the reason we went to 4 Pines – the beer. We tried 5 beers: Nitro Stout, In Season IPA, El Dorado IPA, Pale Ale and Pacific Ale. I preferred the Nitro Stout and the El Dorado IPA. I did find the Pale Ale on many menus throughout the trip though, so clearly it’s a local favorite.
They had about a dozen beers on tap at the time of our visit and wish we could have tasted them all. The prices were very fair for the tasting paddle. We had read the taxes on beer was a bit high, but after the conversion of the US Dollar to Australian Dollar, the prices were on par for what we pay in the states. The pours for most tasting paddles were also more than some local breweries.
Overall – we are very glad we had the chance to stop here. The ferry system was simple and not too expensive compared to an uber. We opted for the standard ferry that took about 30 minutes to get from Manly back to Sydney Harbor. We could have done the Fast Ferry but honestly – we couldn’t see a posting of prices and we already had the Opal card so we took the chance with the standard ferry. The trip back to the Harbor was a great view at least!
Have you had a favorite brewery you visted while traveling? Leave it in the comments, we always love finding good brews! Did you enjoy this post, please share or save on Pinterest!
Traveling TnT 