Sydney

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We flew into Sydney and caught our bus to the hotel. A little rest, some dinner and off to bed.

I should talk about our fellow bus travelers. There are 34 of us on a full size bus, so we have plenty of room to move around. They are all from the US, Canada and England. We told them we were from Canada too so they wouldn't hassle us about our illustrious President. But they found out anyway! They are a great bunch of people. Most are around our age.

We left in the morning to go on a tour of Sydney. We toured around the city and stopped a few times and ended up at Bondi Beach, which is a huge popular beach in Sydney. When its busy there can be 50,000 people on the beach. It was cloudy and cool on our day, so no photos of young, topless girls for you guys. We then went over to the Sydney Opera House for a tour. What an incredible building. It actually has 5 stages inside it. Two are large 1500 person seating and three are smaller with 300-400 seating. We also got a great view of the Sydney Harbor Bridge, which I was going to climb later in the day.

We also went on a 1 hour cruise of Sydney Harbor with a lunch served on board. Then it was my time to climb.

The bus dropped me off at the bridge climbing company and I was on my own. Of the 34 people on our bus, I was the only one to do the bridge climb. Our tour director said that usually about half of the bus does the tour.

They gave us a quicky physical, got us suited up and our group of 8 people started the climb. The whole thing took about 3 hours. It was a blast. It was about a mile total, 1400 stairs, 4 ladders and a fairly steep climb.

I guess I should tell you about my illness. I started getting a sore throat a few days ago. It went into my lungs and I lost most of my voice, plus I was coughing up flem so hard it sounded like I was coughing up a lung. I finally asked the tour director if I could go see a doctor here in Sydney. She says I have a respiratory infection and she gave me a couple of prescriptions for it. It has helped some, but night time is the worst. I cough so hard that I can't sleep for very long. So I'm tired all day. But I keep pressing on, even climbing the bridge while hacking away!

The next day was a free day so we did a pub crawl with a few of our fellow friends. Later that night we had our farewell dinner with everyone before we head to New Zealand.

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Photos

The Sydney Opera House
This was taken from our tour boat

Stacy on Bondi Beach
No, she wouldn't take her top off.

Me on Bondi Beach
No, I didn't take my top off either!

On the bridge
You have all kinds of stuff on you. A 1 piece suit, a harness, a hat, a lanyard for your glasses and a belt with a radio, headphones and a rain jacket in a pouch. Everything is tethered to you, so it can't fall on traffic below. No personal cameras, phones, watches, jewelry can be brought with you.