Sydney - 12/10/2007

Will and I left SFO around 10:30 pm on Saturday night and flew into Sydney around 7 am on Monday morning, losing a day in travel due to the time change. After some time getting through customs and quarantine (they had to check out the food we brought for John & Emily and our shoes), we hopped in a cab and headed to our hotel in downtown Sydney.

Will spoiled us both by getting a room at the Westin Sydney using his Starwood Hotels points and lucky for us, they let us check into the hotel early and gave us a room immediately. After a nice hot shower, we headed out to explore The Rocks area of Sydney before our scheduled climb of Sydney Harbour Bridge. We had originally planned to do the Bridge Climb the next day, but ominous weather reports of rain showers prompted us to change the climb to Monday.






The infamous Bridge Climb takes you on a 3.5 hour tour and climb of over 200 stairs to the summit of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It’s very well planned, with a lot of pre-climb prep (they even give you a breath-a-lyzer to make sure that you’re not too intoxicated for the climb). They don’t allow you to take any personal items (including cameras), and outfit you in some wacky jumpsuits with all the gear tethered to your suit. The climbs are separated in groups of 12 or so people, with the group connected to a safety wire for the entire duration of the climb across skywalks, up ladders, and then finally up the stairs to the summit and back down again. The climb leader was really nice and enthusiastic, and it was a pretty neat experience. I thought it was a little long, but every minute is orchestrated to ensure the most bang for your buck. We also lucked out on no rain during the climb, it started sprinkling a little after we finished the climb…phew!

After some downtime, we met up with Will’s buddy from McGill, John, who recently relocated to Sydney. From our hotel, we walked over to a neighborhood named Surrey Hills, through beautiful Hyde Park and past the Pool of Reflection and the Anzac War Memorial. John took us to a great hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant on Crown Street called Prasits, with a quick stop at a bottle shop (e.g. wine store) to grab two bottles of wine. Like most restaurants in Sydney, Prasits was BYO (bring your own). John’s girlfriend, Melinda, joined us from work and we had a fantastic meal for a reasonable price (much harder to find closer to where we were staying).



We were pretty pooped from our big first day in Sydney, so it was no surprise when I couldn’t keep my eyes open when we got back to the hotel after dinner…