Feb 9th, 2023 Day 37 of 128

Sydney Australia

I was up far sooner then I wanted to be. Excited about todays adventure and I was up at 2:30am this morning. I got up and read for about thirty minutes until I felt like I could back to sleep. The alarm went off at 5:30 am. Last night they announced we should be going past the opera house and under the bridge around 6:00am. I stepped outside after my alarm went off and right outside stood the opera house. The timing couldn’t have been any better. I got into my workout clothes and headed to the gym for the 6:00am opening. Then it was home to wake up Megan for our day. We sent out our laundry and then headed to the Lido for a quick breakfast. Then we had to be in the Main stage theater by 9:15am to meet our excursion and to wait for our turn to disembark and go through immigration. We were ready to go climb a bridge this morning. Last December I tackled some fear of heights by doing the ropes course at the Great Wolf Lodge in Manteca. But today was a MUCH higher climb. We got off the ship and first had to go through a one on one or face to face immigration inspection. Once we got through that (took about 30 minutes) we hopped on our tour bus and over the Bridge Climb Sydney. There were nine brave souls that climbed the bridge from the cruise ship. It was a fantastic lifetime experience that I am so glad to have done. But before we were allowed to climb, and before we got all geared up, every climber had to submit to a breathalyzer. Enjoy the photo of Megan submitting her first ever breathalyzer test. We slinked through tunnels under the bridge, climbed ladders up and eventually hit the steps that climbed up the arch and up to the peak of bridge. The view was overwhelmingly breath taking. As we approached the top we got some fabulous photos and then the storm clouds moved in. We got rained on a little. Then as we descended the lightening warnings were announced and all the tours behind us were turned around before reaching the summit due to the lightening risk. We were fortunate to have been able to fully complete our climb and then safely descend “back to earth”. I am so proud of myself and Megan for tackling this challenge. The peak of the bridge was 440 feet high. There are 6 million rivets in the bridge that were each pounded individually with a hammer, it took 8 years to build the bridge and 16 men died during that time. There were 1332 steps involved in the climb. After the climb we headed back to the ship and changed into our dresses because tonight was also Opera House night. We put on our digs, dolled up ourselves, put on our heels and headed back down to get off the ship. Only much to our dismay, the skies had opened and the rain was dumping. We stood at the gang way for a bit to try and decide what to do. Megan ran back to the room and grabbed our rain coats and changed from her heels into tennis shoes and I took my shoes off all together. We ran from the ship into the terminal through a small river of water to the other side. We hopped on the shuttle that took us from the White Bay Cruise Terminal to the Circular Quay Cruise terminal which is closer to the Opera House. By the time we got there the rain had luckily stopped. We had a long walk to the Restaurant Hubert where we had dinner reservations. We had a fabulous meal at this french estabishmetn, Duck Liver Pate, Chicken Fricassee, their lobster special and Potatoes with a Miso Beurre blanc sauce. It was one of the best meals I have had this trip. After dinner we walked to the Sydney Opera house. Not counting the bridge walk, because they made us take off our watches and everything else to prevent anything from falling to the cars below, we walked over 10 miles today. We got to enjoy a beautiful performance of the opera, Don Giovanni. We were blessed to see Carmen here in 2020 and I feel doubly blessed to have been able to see a second performance here. We took the excursion shuttle back to the ship. It was almost midnight when we got back to the ship. I think it took us about five minutes to go from head on the pillow to sleep. No alarms set for tomorrow. We’re sleeping in as late as we can and have zero plans for tomorrow. Tonight we stay here in Sydney and tomorrow is a free day. I am sure some shopping will ensue at some point. Enjoy the wonderful photos we took throughout the day.