Day 5: My *sniff* last day in Sydney.

Yes, it's true, I only had 5 days in Sydney. Let me tell you, if you really want to do everything in that city, you'll need far more than 5 days. Yes, I did fit more into 5 days than most people do in a week and a half, but it still wasn't quite enough. Oh well, I guess that just means that I'll have to go back. . . shucks.

Also, if you'll look back at the previous days post, you'll notice something about the weather-it gets steadily worse throughout the day. That can only mean one possible thing: I was going to do something outside the next day. And yes, in fact, that's exactly what happened.

Before going onto the tour the day before, I had called ahead and made a booking to do the Sydney Harbor bridge climb. Naturally, that means I had this kind of weather:

Torrential downpour.

Nonetheless, I decided that I would go to the bridge climb spot on the off chance that they took people up on the bridge even in inclement weather. Well, lucky for me, they did. Not only did they go up, they went up in style. Honestly, this was one of the poshest outfits that I've even been with for this kind of thing. They gave us a full body suit, a weather fleece, a raincoat, gloves, a beanie, a baseball cap, and a handkerchief. They attached us to a line that runs all the way across the bridge with some really awesome looking latch that was developed by a blind sailor because he was tired of falling off of his boat. I figure that I see somewhat better than a blind sailor, so I was probably pretty safe with the latch. They even supplied us with this amazing headset that was apparently originally created for the military. It has two metal clamps surrounded by plastic that clamp onto your cheekbones and the vibrations travel through the cheekbones to your ears, allowing you to hear both the ambient sounds of Sydney with open ears and the guide when she was giving details of the Bridge. It was simply posh. I've tried to come up with other words for it, but posh really is the best. They introduced the six of us that were climbing together (2 kiwis, 3 brits, and me), and we set off to climb the bridge.

Sadly, there's some city ordinance forbidding us to take loose items with us on the bridge climb. I guess they're afraid that I'm going to drop my camera on a car or something. They even made me spit out my gum for fear that it would. . . hell if I know, that was just anal. Anyways, basically it boils down to the fact that I have no pictures of my climb, so you're just gonna have to take my word for it. Sorry.

The climb itself was not difficult in any way, shape and/or form. It was basically just a whole bunch of steps up the outside of the bridge, we stopped at the top, looked around a bit, and walked back down the other side. The view, of course, was amazing, and the inclement weather didn't detract from the view at all. In fact, seeing the Opera House staring at me through a veil of rain was a pretty amazing sight. I rather enjoyed it.

Oh, and because it always happens this way, look at the weather in this picture, guess when it was taken? Yep, right after I got done climbing the bridge. Naturally.

Well, now that the bridge climb was done and my flight was nearing up, I really had nothing to do. So I bought a ticket and got on a ferry to Sydney's other famous beach, Manly Beach.

You know that this just means that somebody actually did put their kid on the bow. . .

There was no more precipitation, that much is true, but that doesn't mean that it was blue skies and rainbows. Far from it in fact. It was pretty darn nipply. This means two things:

1) The ferry ride was like being on a roller coaster:

2) Manly beach was deserted:

This let me see Manly Beach's true face, and I found the Beach unworthy of its moniker; in fact, denuded of people, it was really much more of a sissy beach. So I read a little bit of my book there (Perfume, the story of a murderer) and returned to my hostel so that I could get at least a little bit of sleep before my 6:00 wake up call. Eyuck.