Sydney Post (Part 4 of 4)

So, it's winding down to our last couple of days in Sydney. It was kind of raining and pretty overcast on Friday when we woke up. Jon and Mona headed off to explore, and Brad and I headed to the aquarium. It was a really nice aquarium! They had all sorts of fish, sharks, seals and an exhibit of the Great Barrier Reef. We got there at the perfect time because when we left, it was SO crowded!!! My favorite thing was the playtpus. He was swimming so fast all over the place, but I got a photo of him!



When we got back from the zoo, we went for a walk through the botanical gardens, which are huge! We walked up to Mrs Macquaries's Chair (it's actually a rock bench and she was the wife of a governor who had it commissioned for her.) There was a beautiful view of the opera house and the Sydney Harbor Bridge from there. We continued to walk around in the gardens, where we saw a lot of cockatoos and then we looked up in the trees and there were all these flying foxes hanging upside down in the trees. It was absolutely amazing how many of them there were! They are similar to bats, but a little bigger and when they were in the trees, they looked like punching bags. They come out at night, and I would definitely be scared if I was in the gardens and they came flying out! Brad was really excited that we finally got to see them.



After that, we headed off to do our Bridge Climb to the top of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. It was absolutely amazing! It was quite an operation they had. We arrived and they gave us a breathlizer test (Good thing I only had one glass of wine at lunch!) and then they gave us these suits to wear that were wind and water proof, as well as a rain jacket to wear in case it started raining up there. They gave us lockers to put everything in, as we could not take anything up there with us, even watches, since we were over 8 lanes of traffic! They then took us to this station to get our harness with this thing (I can't think of the name right now) that attached to the line that went all the way around the bridge. We (there were 12 of us in the group) got our headsets and then we were off to the bridge. We climbed up about four ladders, which came up in the middle of two lanes of traffic, and then it was pretty easy sailing from there. The steps were not steep, and there were some really great views of the city from up there! We would have been able to see even farther, but it was kind of overcast. It was REALLY windy up there, but it was very cool to see the opera house from above and see out to where the ocean comes into the harbor. There are 60 harbors in Sydney and if you went along the water to all of them, it would be about 400 miles!! Our group leader was very knowlegable, and took about 4 picutres of us on top. (We bought all of them of course, but we don't have a scanner!) The last member of our group was scared out of her mind I think because we were ALWAYS waiting for her, but everyone made it! I am really glad we were able to do that!

After we finished, we headed out to dinner and had Thai again. This time we went to Sailors Thai, which is the second best Thai restaurant in Sydney (according to the concierge), and it was very yummy! I got Pad Thai again, which I know is really boring, but it was excellent again. It was a different kind of restaurant, it was "canteen style," which means it was basically one big long table.

Then, we headed out to the hotels again for a few drinks. We went to two different places, which both had live bands, which were playing songs similar to what we would have heard at a bar here, like Elvis, Bon Jovi....it was pretty cool! It was just so nice because it was warm outside. We tried some good beers there, my favorite was Toohey's Extra Dry. Brad's was Crown Lager.

Saturday, we got up and headed out to do some shopping for souveneirs at the Rocks Market again. We got some good momentos, including an absolutely beautiful picture of the Three Sisters which is being framed at Michael's right now! Then, we were off to the airport.

It was definitely the most beautiful day of the whole week on Saturday, of course. But at least we were leaving with a good picture in our head. The flight on the way back was much harder. I slept about 3 of the 20 hours we were on the planes! I watched at least three of the movies. So, needless to say, when we got home on Saturday night, we slept for about 14 hours! And it took about a week to get re-adjusted to the time change.

What a great experience! Who knows if I will ever get to go back, but if so, I want to explore more of what there is to see outside of Sydney!

Hope you have enjoyed reading about our adventures!