We were only in Sydney for three days at the end of May 2025, but in that time we packed in a lot of stuff, so let's jump right in.
First Up--the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb. If you couldn't tell by the photos, this tourist attraction allows visitors to climb the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge (the one next to the Opera House in photos). We did the extended climb, which takes you all the way up to the top of the bridge, then you walk across it and go back down. As you can see from my photos, you are put into all sorts of safety equipment and harnesses for the climb, and at the end they let you keep your baseball hat as a free souvenir.
Taking your own photos is prohibited, and you have to turn in your phone, watch, and anything else in your pockets to leave in a safety locker. To be fair, it really would be dangerous if you dropped something from that high up on an unsuspecting public below!
(They do give you one free printed photo at the end of the entire group you climbed with, but it costs extra to buy the other photos--and Bridgeclimb Sydney as a company has the right to collect any money made from the posting of their copyrighted photos! So if you're famous and you do the climb, maybe don't post the photos if you plan on collecting any revenue from your posts!).
Also a few more things to note--we climbed at the end of May, which was one of the last days of Autumn in Australia and it was still HOT at times in the sun. I can't imagine doing the climb in all that gear during the summer months! One other thing, make sure to stretch your calves as best you can beforehand! The climb includes multiple staircases at steep inclines, so my calves and lower legs hurt so badly I could hardly walk the next few days. Every step I took felt like I was tearing my muscles, and my future sister-in-law and my future cousin-in-law said they both felt the same way!
Now for some more information about Bridgeclimb itself. According to their website, the attraction first opened in 1998, and since then people from 140 countries have climbed the bridge, over 4 million people in total so far!
The website also says they've staged over 5,000 proposals and THIRTY weddings. Y'all, can you image getting married on a bridge way up in the sky? Having been up there myself I will say unless you're at the very top there's not much room--and I also wonder if the bride and groom got to wear the clothes they wanted or if they also had to wear the jumpsuit the rest of us did. Bridgeclimb also claims one climber has reached the summit 133 times, and the oldest person to climb was over 100 years old, holy cow!
After doing a bit of research about the bridge itself, I learned that the Harbour Bridge is the largest steel arch bridge in the world. The bridge itself took over eight years to build, opening in 1932. In October of 2004, an Olympic torch for that years' games were taken all the way to the top of the bridge.
I personally thought the Bridge Climb experience was really fun, but my fiancé is terrified of heights and so if you look at his photos he looks bug eyed, poor guy! He still did the climb as a way of trying to overcome his fear of heights, and I hope it helped a little, but if you are ever in Sydney and want to do something adventurous I highly recommend the climb!
The Rocks Discovery Museum is a small, free admission museum very near the Sydney Bridge Climb experience. The museum is called The Rocks because that is what the area of Sydney is called, "The Rocks." And its true, if you walk around that part of town, the ground is very uneven and rocky, built into the side of a hill that leads down to the water in the Harbour.
We didn't spend too much time at the museum, but it was still interesting to look at the artifacts from early Sydney history from 1788 and even earlier, dating back thousands of years to Australia's aboriginal population in the area, the Gadigal People.
Featherdale Sydney Wildlife Park is actually in a geographical area known as "Blacktown" according to our wonderful tour guide that we had that day, Simon! (I highly doubt he will ever see this post, but if he does, congrats Simon you were by far our best tour guide we had in all the places we went around the world!).
Anyways...we learned that the part of town is called "Blacktown" because...well...historically the aboriginal people in the area were all forced to live there by the white settlers, and nobody ever bothered to change the name once the town was integrated. Yikes. No I'm not kidding (at least according to Simon that's the story anyway!).
As for Featherdale itself, the park was really fun! Its a petting zoo but is fun for all ages, and we saw so many different animals there I lost track. If you are in the Sydney area and want to see all the animals you associate with Australia (the cute and fuzzy kind, not the venomous kind anyway!) this is the place to visit. We even got to feed various Kangaroos, as you can see from my photos, including an albino one!
Simon apparently takes tourists to the park all the time, and all the staff seemed to know him. At one point, Simon was showing us how to pat a wombat on the butt--explaining they can bite if you touch them to close to their heads. After demonstrating, he rounded a corner with the rest of our group, while I decided to give the wombat a pat. I promptly got reprimanded by staff for doing so...oops!
Another attraction at the park is getting your photo taken with a koala bear. It costs extra but was really fun to do as well! (My fiancé doesn't like his photos being posted online so you'll have to excuse me covering up his face, lol). The koala we got to take photos with was named Byron and he was a pretty chill guy.
According to Featherdale's website, their park is home to 260 different species of animals and first opened in 1972. They also have an awesome gift shop! (And my fiancé said the coffee was really good and pretty cheap too!).
The Queen Victoria Building is, of all things, a mall located right in the heart of Sydney. First opened in 1898, the building was originally created to replace the original Sydney Markets. The name was inspired by the fact that Queen Victoria was celebrating her Diamond Jubilee around the time the building opened.
When I visited, my first reaction was, "Wow, I can't afford anything in this place!" The QVB, as its known by locals, is not just any shopping mall--the vast majority of the shops are high end designer brands or, at the very least, places out of my price range. There were a few cafes inside, and a hobby store with some pretty cool model sets, but I mostly window shopped and browsed while trying not to breathe wrong and break something on accident.
But that's not the end of the story! As we went down further and further, we realized that the basement of the QVB connects to a regular shopping mall called "Westfield." It was very odd at first to go from one area that was all high end fancy stuff, to suddenly being in a mall just like any other around the world (we ate at a McDonald's in the food court for example).
Something I noticed about Sydney was just how many random monuments were placed all over. I only got photos of a few while we drove around, but I figured I might as well include them here. Above is a monument to a Lieutenant killed during the Battle of Paardeberg during the South African Boer War in 1900.
This monument was dedicated to a man who served as Alderman of Sydney for several years.
(You can tell I still had my sunburn from French Polynesia in this photo, yikes!)
Here I am sitting on a famous Sydney Landmark called "Mrs. Macquarie's Chair." The sandstone block was carved by inmates in 1810, in order for the governor's wife (Mrs. Macquarie) to have a place to sit to look at the Harbour. How sweet...I guess? I don't think there has ever been a more stereotypical Australian sentence typed before!
For lunch, we stopped at a place called The Icebergs, which is apparently a social club and also a restaurant off Bondi Beach. The club itself is apparently one of the most famous in Australia, and according to Simon, the only way to get into the club is to go swimming in one of the pools that has literally icebergs in it, brr! No thanks! The club was founded in 1929 and continues to operate to this day.
I had never heard of Bondi Beach before we arrived, but apparently the beach itself is really famous, and there's also a TV show called Bondi Rescue that my future-mother-in-law loves! One of my future brother-in-law's made sure to snap a photo of the lifeguards to send home to his mom!
I must say, the beach at Bondi was really pretty and the water is very clear. It wasn't quite as bright blue as the tropical water was in French Polynesia (which is where we had been only a few days before), but the water was much prettier than any strip of the Pacific Ocean I have personally seen in the United States. So, if you're a beach person and happen to be in Sydney, definitely check out Bondi.
One of our nights in Sydney, we took a Harbour Dinner Cruise around the Sydney Harbour. The food was...not very good, I was seasick the whole time, and the live music was horrible! We actually got off the boat on the first stop available, a half hour sooner than the stop we were supposed to get off! But anyways, while we were there, the Vivid Sydney light show was going on.
Apparently Vivid is an annual show that happens in Sydney where they light up some of the iconic buildings around the Harbour. 2025 was the fifteenth year for Vivid, a celebration put on by the New South Wales' Tourism industry. The 2025 theme for Vivid was "Dream"--I didn't get to look out and see any of it myself because of how sick I was on the boat, but the rest of my group that did go outside said it was pretty cool!
Sources:
Sydney Harbour Bridge (and Climb):
https://www.bridgeclimb.com/about-us
https://www.bridgeclimb.com/About-Us/BridgeClimb-s-Story
https://www.sydney.com/destinations/sydney/sydney-city/sydney-harbour/sydney-harbour-bridge
The Rocks Discovery Museum:
https://rocksdiscoverymuseum.com/about-the-museum
https://www.therocks.com/our-story
Featherdale Sydney Wildlife Park:
https://www.featherdale.com.au/about-us/
Queen Victoria Building:
https://www.qvb.com.au/centre-info/history-of-qvb
Random Monuments We Saw:
https://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/people/military/display/23701-lieutenant-gideon-grieve
https://www.sydneyaldermen.com.au/alderman/patrick-nolan/
Bondi Beach and the Iceberg Club:
https://icebergs.com.au/icebergs-club/
https://www.sydney.com/destinations/sydney/sydney-east/bondi
Vivid Sydney:
