It's a Small World!

We woke up this morning to rain. I can forgive Sydney for raining since on this entire trip we had only one or two days of drizzle in New Zealand and much of the heavier downpours occurred while we were driving (or should I say Darren was driving and it wasn't me who got to negotiate mountain-top lanes. My job was simply to scream "Careful!" and "Slow Down!" where appropriate) .

I can't, however, forgive the rain for its timing as we still had our mudguard-less bikes till 1pm and short of caking our behinds in street gunk, cycle-siteseeing wasn't going to be fun today. Nevertheless, we donned our trusty cagouls and cycled to the Opera House to book our behind the scenes tour for 11:15. With 30 minutes or so to spare, we cut our losses and returned the bikes to their home in the Opera House underground car park.

The Opera House Tour was fantastic! I've come to realise that if you book guided trips or tours, how much fun you have is largely determined by 2 factors:

1 - The livliness and sense of humour of your guide
2 - The livliness and sense of humour of your tour party

I feel that this theory works regardless of the actual trip content.

Our guide for the Opera House was very passionate about the building, it's history and architecture and despite the seemingly obligatory argy-bargy between members of the party when moving from one room to the other and a few angry words, which I can only describe as 'Tour Rage', it was an excellent tour. Sweeter still was our 20% off voucher, we'd presented on arrival.

We had a few hours to kill before our prebooked Sydney Harbour Bridgeclimb so we did a bit of Lunch 'n' shopping. Sweetiedarling.

So the Bridgeclimb was booked for 5:30pm. This involves climbing up to the very top of Sydney Harbour Bridge, crossing over the top and then climbing down the other side. The whole experience takes about 4 hours from start to finish. Having watched people do the climb earlier in the week in the 30°c /100% humidity midday heat, I was thankful that we'd booked the Twilight Tour... All except... that rain I was talking about? Yeah-that got worse and brought the wind with it.

We pretty much conquered our fear of heights while skydiving so the actual climb didn't really phase either of us but the pelting rain and galeforce winds resulted in fits of giggles. The rain is so hard you can barely see and the struggle to keep your balance while 134 metres up in the air over Sydney Harbour provided the subject of much amusement for Darren and I and also the couple in front, Ash and Vicki

Ash & Vicki (Won't you guys be pleased you get your own paragraph!)

Isn't it strange that you can be on the other side of the world and bump into people with some spooky coincidences:

1. Ash and Vicki live in Newbury where I grew up and where my parents still live.
2. Ash proposed to Vicki that same day. Like Darren, he had originally decided to propose on top of Sydney Harbour Bridge. The weather, however had forced him to change his plans and ask Vicki earlier in the day. She said yes by the way!
3. Ash works on New Greenham Park in Newbury - less than 100 metres from Liberty House (That's where I used to work)

Isn't it a small world?

So after a hectic day, Ash and Vicki joined us for a pint after the climb before retiring for the day.

Lou xx