Sydney...a bridge too far???

After a short flight from Melbourne we flew into Sydney to amazing views of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House on another sunny Aus day.

We treated ourselves to a bit of luxury by staying in a serviced apartment overlooking Darling Harbour, it was bascially a 5 star hotel but with a kitchen and washer/dryer (very handy for us travellers!) but they still made your beds!

We wandered down to Darling Harbour and the many restaurants and bars then on to Circular Quay for our second view of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House. It was just as good and you really know you are in Oz!

We booked our Bridge climb for a few days time (enough to realise how very very high it was) but next up was the world famous Bondi Beach for the continuation of our world beach tour!

The sand was white, the surf was indeed up and there were no shortage of "dudes" riding the waves. We took a coastal walk to some other bays and had great views back over Bondi.

Back in Sydney CBD we took a tour of the historic "Rocks" district one of the first English settlements in Australia, Sydney Observatory for some amazing views of the city and then checked out the shopping (Lucy).

We went on an evening dinner cruise for a 3 course gourmet meal. We opted for the 'all you can drink' bar ticket for $30 each thinking this was a very good deal. We soon realised that the drinks were surprisingly cheap on board and to get our moneys worth we'd have to put in some hard drinking, which we duly did. 2 bottles of red wine, 6 beers and a couple of vodkas later, we disembarked 'captain cooks' ship and headed home. The following day was spent mainly in the apartment, eating fast food and feeling sick. Must have been a dodgy prawn...

On our penultimate day in Sydney, the time had come to climb the harbour bridge. So, with some trepidation, we made our way to the briefing room and put on the very fetching grey boiler suits - unfortunately the pictures of us in the boiler suits are not going to appear on the blog - we will show personal screenings for a fee when we are home. Lucy wanted to buy me one of these suits but they were not available for purchase. And so to the climb itself, it was nowhere near as scary as it appeared, after the first couple of ladders above 6 lanes of traffic/trains it was a breeze. The views were as fantastic as you can imagine.

We spent our last day in Sydney at Taronga zoo, for more great views of Sydney from the cable car and lots of Aussie animal encounters.

Next up, we picked up our (hippie) camper for the next 3.5 weeks to make our way up the east coast.

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