For Nicola’s birthday I had booked for us to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge, so after a quick call to confirm the time we were due to arrive (I had no email confirmation which wasn’t making me nervous, honest) we left our hotel at around 10:30 for a walk through the Botanical Gardens (BG) and towards the bridge. The walk through the BG was lovely, and only took us 20 minutes or so. The BG is pretty big, and is bang smack in the middle of Sydney so provides welcome greenery amongst the high rises and business folk. We left the BG and discovered a walkway along Cahill Expressway (the motorway/”freeway” that commuters use to get into and out of Sydney that runs across the Harbour Bridge). The walkway was pretty elevated so provided us with a fantastic view of the Rocks (Sydney’s first European settlement site) and across Circular Quay (a focal point of Sydney where you can catch ferries across the harbour and the site of Sydney Opera House), Sydney Opera House as well as the Bridge itself.
Pictures (Left) from the Botanical Gardens
We made it to the Bridge Climb site in time, and as we were preparing to get ready it started to rain...typical. We flew all the way from Wales to Australia and as we prepare to complete one of the most iconic trips in Australia, it decides to go Welsh on us and rain! Nevertheless, we had a brilliant time on the bridge. We were lucky as there was only 4 of us in our group (Nicola and I, plus Carlos and Carlos from Barcelona) as opposed to the usual 14. Our tour guide, Romeo, was excellent and very knowledgeable and he was inundated with questions (pretty much all from me) about the history of the bridge, the harbour itself and so on. The rain added a bit more adventure to the climb as it was otherwise a fairly easy affair getting to the top. The views from the top speaks for itself, it is a universally recognised iconic view, with the Opera House behind and the Harbour stretching as far as the eye can see dotted here and there with ferries shuttling across the water. We both had a great time, bought a photo (as the complimentary group photo is a little strange with the 4 of us, it makes it look like Nicola and I made fast friends with Carlos x2) and received a complimentary bridge climb hat…bargain!
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| Monument representing the first settlers in Australia |
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| The Rocks |
After the Bridge Climb we had a look around the Rocks area, which was quite nice – apparently a lot of investment has gone into the area as it used to be a bit rough and ready up to the 70s/80s. We were also given a free ticket to go up to the viewing platform on the “Pylon”, one of the towers of the Bridge so we headed there to try and take some photos overlooking the Opera House. Unfortunately it was closed. I had originally bought the daylight bridge climb because I was advised by STA travel that it was the best time for you to take photos on the bridge…however, for safety reasons you are NOT allowed to take your own photos on the bridge climb…hence why we had to buy one. It was a bit of a shame not to have an elevated panorama (I had discovered how to use panorama mode on my camera shortly before) of the harbour and Opera House but we did get plenty of other photos of the area anyway so I guess it’s no big deal.
By this time it was approaching 18:00 (the Bridge Climb
takes approx. 2 ½ hours) so we decided to walk back through the BG to our
hotel. We stopped off by the Opera House to take some photos and we headed
along a nice point called Mrs Macquarie's Point where we watched the sunset
behind the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge…very beautiful.
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