After
much anticipation, the weekend we'd all been waiting for arrived!
Sydney!! The big city that you automatically think of when you think
Australia. Plus, my parents and aunt were coming! So Thursday morning we
woke up bright and early as usual (why do we always choose flights that
leave so dang early??) and took a cab to the airport, where we were
then told our hour and a half flight from Gold Coast to Sydney was an
international flight. Excuse me what? That kind of freaked us out
because we were expecting it to be like in the states how security would
be 10x more intense and then we would have to go through customs and
everything, but we should have known better. International security
consisted of only me going through a full body scanner and the security
guards joking around with us about our accents. Literally, that was it.
After landing in Sydney and walking straight out the door without a
second glance from customs, we took a train downtown and went in search
of our hotel. Yes, you read that right, hotel. No hostel for us this
weekend! Thanks to my lovely parents, we were living in the lap of
luxury. We had a king sized bed, pull out couch and balcony overlooking
Darling Harbour. It was seriously unreal. And we may or may not have had
a freak out dance party to celebrate. Darling Harbour itself is a
really cool little place with tons of restaurants so we got some lunch
and then headed to Bondi Beach!
The
hotel concierge told us it would be significantly cheaper and faster to
take a cab so we took his advice and it was neither cheap nor fast.
But, the beach was beautiful. You can tell it gets more use than the
beaches we usually go to because it was a little dirtier, but there were
these awesome rocks that you can climb out on so obviously we had a
photo shoot. The waves would splash up really high behind them so we
spent at least an hour trying to capture all the perfect pictures with
the waves. Then we decided to explore the whole Bondi Beach area. Its a
ways out from the center of town and has a totally different vibe. There
were a bunch of cool little shops around the area and we met this store
owner who totally cracked us up and had a $15 sale box full of dresses
and things that were originally $120+. Of course, as I've said before,
being built the way I am makes it harder for me to find fashionable
things that fit me right, but Alex and Christy both found awesome things
in the box! We meandered around for a while and got dinner before
heading back to the hotel and calling it an early night. When I say
early, I mean early... we were all asleep by 10 in anticipation of
waking up early for my parents arrival the next morning!
My
parents had told me they were going to text me once they landed in
Sydney so that I would know when to be up and ready for them to get to
the hotel. Well, at 7:15, our hotel room phone starts ringing and when I
answered, it was my dad saying they were in the lobby waiting for us!
We were all still in our pajamas but we sprinted to the elevator and
into the lobby where I'm sure we caused a scene with our screaming and
crying. After we all calmed down, we got ready as fast as we could, ate
poptarts (a delicacy that my parents hand delivered from the US) and
then headed out to explore! We took a ferry to Sydney Harbour, where the
bridge and Opera House are located. The weather was absolutely
beautiful too, which made it even more perfect. Our first stop was the
botanical garden. We were going to go on a guided walking tour but after
about 3 minutes, Alex, Christy and I got bored so we ducked out and
went back towards the Opera House for a photo shoot. I mean, if you
don't take a million pictures, did you really even see it? The answer is
no. Then we met up with the family and got ready for our tour of the
Opera House! We got to see the inside and a three of the five theaters
plus got to learn a lot about the construction and everything. The lobby
outside the main auditorium has purple carpet and purple walls. For
such an amazing building, it was alarming that it would have such a
bizarre interior. After getting lunch, we headed to Manly Beach, which
we got to by taking another beautiful ferry ride. 
The Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb is something that literally everyone we talked to told us to do, so thanks to my amazing parents, the dream came true! I hadn't really thought to be nervous about it until we got there. I knew my dad was super nervous and I had seen the pictures but I guess it didn't really hit me until we walked through the doors. Then I started to panic. I would be walking on a piece of steel 250 feet off the ground. We got a quick briefing and then had to put on our super cute janitor looking outfits so that we didn't distract drivers on the bridge and trucker hats because it was so hot and sunny. Then we put on our harnesses and did the practice course, which was small and had practice ladders so you could get the hang of walking while attached to the bridge. Then we were off! It started walking over these wooden planks that looked ancient, which didn't help my nerves.
Then
we were to the ladders. There were four steep ladders that you had to
climb up with traffic rushing past on either side of you, which was
terrifying. But then suddenly you were at the top and it wasn't scary at
all anymore! The view was unbelievable. It was a lot of steps but it
didn't seem too steep until walking back down, when I started to panic a
bit again. Then I had to climb down the ladders we came up and my
harness got stuck. I tried to balance and hold on for dear life and
untangle myself all at once which was not an easy task as the trains
rolled by next to me, but I somehow managed to survive. We finally
landed on solid ground again and survived the bridge climb!
We
met back up with Aunt Jo at the hotel and got some lunch. Spicy hot
wings and BBQ pork sandwich <3 <3 <3 Then we were on the move
to go shopping. After spending some time in a very upscale mall and
realizing all we could afford was a caramel bar (which was delicious),
we walked across the street to the other mall which had stores we could
afford. Yay shopping! We went to church at the gorgeous cathedral, while
a nice storm raged outside. After mass we headed to the Sydney Tower,
twice as tall as the harbour bridge, and went to the bar on top. It was
kind of like the Space Needle in Seattle where the whole thing rotated
so you could see the whole city without ever moving. Since it was dark
out the whole city was lit up! Again we called it an early night and I
prepared for an even earlier morning to cheer on my parents.
They've
been training for a half marathon for a while and decided to run a 10k
while they were in Sydney. They made the mistake of choosing to run a
trail race instead of a road race so when our taxi pulled into a
national park at 7 Sunday morning, we started to get slightly concerned.
There were big hills and lots of trees everywhere but the parents
stayed optimistic. They got all checked in and I was all ready to cheer
them on! Once the race began, I realized I couldn't really go anywhere
besides the start/finish line because they were literally running
through the woods so I sat on the rocks, soaked up some sun and almost
got eaten alive by giant mutant goose creatures. As people started to
cross the finish line and more time passed I got a little concerned.
Finally, mom emerged and then dad followed 10 minutes later. Apparently
the course was much more treacherous than anticipated and to avoid
getting hurt, mom cut out and only ran the 7k. But, they both finished
and survived! Dad hurt his finger (yes, he hurt his finger in a run...)
but other than that they were both unscathed! 
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