The Harbour Bridge Climb is one of those quintisential things everyone told us we must do when in Sydney.  We certainly had our doubts about the whole experience, since it really seemed like quite the tourisy thing.  But wait, we are tourists.  As it turns out, lots of locals do the climb as well since it truly is spectacular and give you such an amazing vantage point of the city.

The deal with the climb is you make your non-changeable/non-refundable reservation (we made ours the day before).  They have this whole process down to a science.  From the time you check in to the time you leave the building everything is choreographed beautifully (total of a 3.5 hour process).  They have groups of 12 climbers begin the climb every 10 minutes, and our group was at1:45pm.  This really funny, I'll just say quite overweight guy dressed in the really tight climb suit, was the one who gave us the initialy spiel on everything we needed to know.  He even took breathalizer tests on us all, since you clearly can't be annebriated for climbing a 167 meter bridge. 

Then we're passed along to another room where we're all given out climb suits.  Definitely not the most stylish thing, but they'll do.  Unfortunately, after Jason and I were all suited up, had our harnesses on, and all our clips, I majorly had to go pee (probably just the anxiety of knowing I couldn't go for the next 2 hours) and Jason decided he'd try as well.  Once again, although we make fun of "those people" in groups, we were "those people" that held everyone up while we went to the bathroom.

Anyway, next thing they do is give you a little test run up some ladders, just to make sure you can actually climb.  We passed no problem.  Our climb began through the large pylons.  We walked under the bridge on some kind of precarious looking mesh stuff, climbed some ladders and we were on the main support that took us up. 

The climb wasn't very difficult, and at quite a leisurely pace so you have time to really absorb the magnificent views.  Apparently the total number of stairs and steps for the whole climb is around 1,300 and the total climb time on the bridge is 2 hours.  We were so lucky to have blue skies that day, with few clouds, epecially since it was pouring rain the night before (and tours go out even in the rain--the only exception is lightening).  The Opera House looked truly amazing from up there, and you could see everything in a 360 range.

Jason's totally into the idea of creating a bridge climb on the Golden Gate, although apparently those rights have already been sold to the same guy who created it on the Harbour bridge.  At $169/person,12 people per climb, departing every ten minutes from 7:30 am -9pm, you do the math on what they're raking in.  That aside, the experience is so worth it especially because you can get a cheesy picture taken at the top with the Opera House in the background -- definitely worth the extra $25 for that single image on a disk (not allowed to bring own cameras on the climb, since that could be bad news if it fell!)