Sydney, Australia

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!