Today was the first day after the SharePoint Conference, so I had some time to really see the city. This morning Joel, Meredith and I climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge. We You start climbing the bridge well back before the arch or the towers, walking horizontal to the ground about 50 meters up. Then, climbing a series of ladders, you emerge up through the roadway… seriously… you literally come up between two lanes! Then you get on top of the arch and walk all the way to the summit before heading back down. The whole experience was quite hot… the wind never picked up and the suits they make you wear were a bit warm. But it was a last. all thought the heights would affect us, but they surprisingly didn’t. The only time it really got to me was when you were walking under the roadway or as you emerged from above the roadway to just below it. Too bad they didn’t let you take anything up with you (except your “sunnies” otherwise known as sunglasses), so I didn’t get as many pictures or video that I was hoping for, but they did take pictures of us. We got a few of us on the walk, especially the one of us at the crest of the bridge:
Climbing the Sydney Harbor Bridge
We then headed to Darling Harbour for lunch and toured the Sydney Wildlife World, a zoo-like place for Australian animals. We got to see kangaroos and koala bears (see following images).
Kangaroos!
Koalas!
We also saw a button for an elevator, but none of us were very keen to push it for obvious reasons… just didn’t seem like the poor little painted animal would appreciate it very much:
Don't push that button!
Tomorrow, our last full day in Australia, Meredith and I are planning to take a ferry over to Bondi Beach and one last pass through Sydney before we have to start packing up.
I’ve posted a bunch of pictures in this post here: Wrapping up a fantastic trip to Australia.