Thursday started out lazily, as I needed to get some bookings made for the upcoming New Zealand portion of our trip. In the afternoon, we walked to Circular Quay and took a harbor cruise. The weather was absolutely perfect. It was a bit comical, because the boat was huge and only eight of us got on for the cruise. There was also some sort of private luncheon in progress when we boarded, but still the boat was about 25% full. Hooray for off-peak travel!

Sydney Harbour is the largest in the world, and even though we had seen it from high above, taking this cruise really gave us an understanding of just how large it is. There are numerous bays with entire neighborhoods contained on them jutting into the harbor and lots of boats of every kind, from kayaks to yachts to cruise ships.

As you can see, we had awesome views of the city skyline and the Opera House. It would have been very relaxing but for the fact that I was nervous about our next activity–climbing to the top of this:

If you zoom in, you can see the tiny little people on top of the bridge. That would be us in a few hours.

After our cruise, we had a snack and made our way to the bridge. I was very nervous–not really about the height, but about the 1334 steps involved. Rich was a bit nervous about the height. Spoiler alert–we both ended up loving the experience! 10 out of 10, would do it again!!!

Before you do the climb, there is about an hour of prep, which is really well organized and thorough. You have to put on a jumpsuit and then go through a metal detector to make sure you haven’t forgotten to leave anything in your locker that could fall off and kill someone below. Then you get a bunch of things attached to the jumpsuit (your sunglasses, a torch (flashlight), a radio and headphones to hear the guide, a jacket in case you get cold, and even a handkerchief. Then you practice going up and down the type of ladders that are on the bridge.

Then it is time to go out onto the bridge. Our tour guide, Kelly, was fantastic. She suggested that if you were nervous you should be at the front of the line, near her, and since I was the only one who admitted being terrified, I was the leader. At first I was worried that I would slow everyone down, but it was actually perfect, because I could set the pace and absolutely no one was in a hurry for the experience to be done. And Kelly was great at making everyone, including me, feel totally comfortable. We did the twilight tour, which means we started with daytime views, saw the sunset from the summit, and then saw all the lights come on in the city as we descended. It was amazing!

We could not take our phones, obviously, but Kelly took photos along the way.

Having survived the bridge climb, we had dinner and made our way back to our hotel.