New Year's Eve in Sydney...

I'll be honest and admit that I'm not someone that gets all excited about New Year's Eve. In fact, most years I'm sound asleep when the clock ticks over from one year to the next, apart from a couple of memorable events over the years, including a great party when Lana and I were living in South Brisbane. But this year I was lucky enough to finally tick off seeing the Sydney Firework Spectacular and this was what I experienced:

Generally the thought of the heading into the city with inflated prices & long taxi queues to get home makes staying at home a good option. Last year however I got to live out one of my ultimate bucket list moments - celebrating New Year's Eve in Times Square, New York along with a million or so of my closest friends.  Every year I have watched TV reports of New Year's Eve celebrations around the world, starting with the iconic images of the fireworks over Sydney Harbour before seeing the iconic ball drop from Times Square nearly 15 hours later, so to be right in the middle of it last year was a dream come true.  You can read all about my experience here.

So this year, I finally got to tick spending NYE in the Harbour City off my shrinking bucket list. And what a night it was. Back in June I started talking about wanting to be in Sydney, so when I found cheap flights, they were booked pretty quickly. The next big decision was what Jo & I would do as there was no way I wanted to be camping out all day to secure a good spot. So my research skills went into overdrive and I finally decided on attempting to get a ticket for the "Lawn with a View" in the Royal Botanic Gardens in a position just above the Opera House. Having registered my interest (2014 registration details here) I was able to get pre-sale tickets so we were all set, or so I thought...

Thanks to a competition run by Citibank Australia, my friend Jo was lucky enough to win tickets on the Citi NYE Harbour Cruise, so that's how it came to be that I was able to view the New Year's Eve fireworks from a prime location on Sydney Harbour.

Early in the day, I went up to the viewing levels of Sydney tower where I saw the crowds already gathering on the harbour. Thankfully, I didn't have to worry about doing that.

As per out check-in instructions, we were at the King St Wharf at Darling Habour at 5.30pm to wait for out boat to arrive. There was a small group of people waiting patiently for our boat to arrive. at the wharf there was also big crowds gathering for a number of other large boats that would be on the harbour for the festivities, but unlike them, we didn't have to pay big bucks for the experience.

There ended up being about 40 people on our boat and we finally ended up off Point Piper and had a great view of the Bridge and the city. The only disappointing part was that after we arrived, one quite large boat arrived and was between us & the Bridge. And depending on where we drifted, the vessel quite often would obstruct our view. Citibank had a photographer on board the boat and he pointed out the boats of the Packer family and Mick Doohan's boat where Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and their kids were watching the fireworks. For a short time, the weather looked a little threatening but thankfully the rain stayed away.

We ate, we drank, we watched the fireworks twice, starting with the Family show at 9am before the big finale at midnight. It was pretty spectacular and I'm beyond thankful to Jo for letting me tag along.

We finally made it back to the dock at around 2pm. It was such a great night and certainly one more thing to tick off the bucket list.