Yoga highs

Something crazy makes me sign up for a yoga class at 6.45am. I am desperate for a good stretch but that is pushing it. What makes this class unique, however, is that it's taking place on the Observation Deck of the Sydney Tower, roughly 300 metres high. In the picture below, I think it's just under the spike. 

I have to leave Anne's place in the dark to get the bus to the CBD (Central Business District). Our teacher Sasha is bright and breezy and does a sort of Hatha by way of Hollywood class, never once removing her gigantic black sunglasses. The class makes the most of the panoramic views and I don't think I'll ever do the tree pose with quite such a spectacular vista to focus on... 

But spectacular yoga vista number two arrives just a few days later when I join my friend Alison's pal Nicky West for one of her Yoga by the Sea sessions at Coogee, a few bays south of Bondi. The class takes place on the deck at Wylie's heritage-listed sea-water pool and the finale has to be one of the most sublime Shavasanas ever, as I sink down into the mat to the sound of the Tasman Sea.

Nicky shows me the area south of here, Maroubra (below) where she lives, and La Perouse (middle pic). It all feels very local – at one point we're eating egg rolls on the beach and about 100 schoolboys appear from nowhere and start messing about in the sand, kicking balls, being boisterous and crowding out the grannies who are there looking after their little grandchildren. It's the sprawl west of Sydney and you can tell that kids here don't have the same advantages. The passengers on the bus ride back are much more reminiscent of my average bus journey through south London than the other buses I've been catching. 

As a little aside, I read later that an old fort in La Perouse was used as a location for one of the Mission Impossible movies. So Tom Cruise was here!