Thank you John and Patricia Sampson

Blog Post 14 - the last one.

Woke up bright and early at 3:30am NZ time to catch our flight.  I had another hour to sleep, but as anyone who ever has an early flight knows, once you are up, you are up - don't want to miss that flight!  We got to the CHCH airport - thank goodness we were early since there is a 23 kilo weight limit on bags and we had one at 28k.  Ugh.  We shoved a bunch of stuff into plastic bags and off we went.  Sadly, that meant no duty free wine from NZ.

Flight was an uneventful 3 1/2 hours - they have about 20 new release movies available, so I was quite happy and could have stayed on the plane longer.  Imitation Game and Horrible Bosses 2.  Landed at 8:30am (2 hour time change).  Got through the airport and into a taxi in a record breaking 30 minutes - including customs, etc.  We stayed at the Park Hyatt on Sydney Harbor (thank you Hyatt points) with an astounding view of the harbor and the famed Opera House (see FB picture from our balcony). 

After quickly dumping our stuff, we took off - with only one day in Sydney, no time to waste.  We walked to the opera house for a tour and while waiting in line, a woman walks up to us and says she has free tickets that she got from purchasing opera tickets and they weren't going to use the tour tickets - she gave us two tickets for the exact tour we wanted ($76 savings) - we just had to be them.  Thank you John and Patricia Sampson!  The opera tour was interesting - the inside has a bunch of different theaters and we got to go into a few while sets were down (could see behind the scenes, literally) and while the Sydney Orchestra was practicing.  All and all, a good show.

I was starting to fade, so we grabbed lunch on the wharf, which perked me up a little, then we walked  around downtown trying to find the local office of my new company so we could take a picture by the sign.  Given that we hadn't showered and were pretty grubby, we decided not to go up to the actual office.  Barely made it back to the hotel before collapsing - keep in mind we had the bridge climb still scheduled.

We relaxed for about 38 minutes and took off again for the bridge.  We had to walk pretty far and up a bunch of stairs to get there (exhausted) and made it with 10 minutes to spare.  The climb organization is amazing - they have a system of safety and processes that is really thorough - we noticed this a lot in NZ, too.  We harnessed up and again, off we went. 

After jumping off a 43 meter bridge, climbing to the top of a 141 meter bridge was no big thing.  Very windy as we went up (40-50k winds), but the views were spectacular.  Yeah sunny skies!  Lots of good stories from our climbing guide about how and when the bridge went up. Totally rejuvenated!

Post bridge, we scrapped our plans for further touristy things and a fancy dinner.  We had some local pizza and beer on the way back to the hotel and then just relaxed.  It is now morning - we have about an hour left before leaving for the airport.  We are looking at the sun rise over the Opera house.

It has been a once in a lifetime experience and we are so thankful to have been given the opportunity to do this.  For those of you who followed our journey - we hope you enjoyed reading about it even a fraction as much as we enjoyed doing it.

G'Day.