How to cover an amazing 2 weeks spent in New South Wales, Australia and do it justice? I thought I’d write a few articles briefly talking about each bit of my holiday with a few photos to illustrate what I’m talking about. For the final article I’ll show a slick slide-show with all the photos I took over the trip.
We arrived first thing in the morning in Sydney and would have to wait until lunchtime to get into the hotel. This gave us a chance to get a coffee from Starbucks and think about where we wanted to go. Lonely Planet guide in one hand and strong coffee in the other, we looked at the options – and it seemed the obvious choice was to go up the Sydney Tower, the highest point in town measuring in at 250m high.
I don’t know if I was expecting Sydney to be bigger, but I was surprised to find that I could see all the interesting landmarks from the harbour bridge north to the opera house east. The view north is right. It was quite spectacular being able to see the whole city beneath my feet.
After that we had a bite to eat and went down to the Sydney Aquarium which was awesome. There were so many interesting fish, lobsters, eels, sharks, seals and even a crocodile (scary things those) and the underwater tunnels were cool – you could see sharks swimming around eating fish.
After a day or two of wandering around, exploring Sydney, light shopping and sleeping off the jet-lag, we decided to go on one of the open-topped city tours. You could hop on and off at various points and really get to see the whole place. It’s interesting to see the mix of old and new buildings right next to each other:
No trip to Sydney would be complete without a visit to the Sydney Opera House. It didn’t look that impressive from our viewpoint but up close you get to see what an amazing piece of architecture it is!
My good lady was a bit sceptical about how big it was so I took the following shot to remind her that it’s pretty big really. I don’t know what sort of enormous building she was imagining!
And looking back along at the city you’ll agree it’s a super-modern place:
All in all I really liked Sydney. It’s a big city for sure, but it’s not a dirty or unfriendly place so far as I could tell. It’s truly a 24 hour city (our time in a hotel in the centre proved that) and yet you’ve got beaches a short distance away (and the famous Bondi Beach of course). And the sunshine helped too. Lovely!
hooray, your still alive!
great to hear from you again and you have some nice shots there, very well done.
look foward to hearing more from you soon
Sounds great! Was it a cloudy day in that first shot, or are you in the smog at the top of the tower?
If you can believe it, it was in fact a cloudy day! It cleared to sunshine the next though which was more of what I was expecting.
its not always nice weather in Australia! I live in Sydney and some days have awful weather.
Pang. That last shot reminds me of Minneapolis in the summer.
Ouch. 🙁 I never got to go to Minneapolis but if it’s like that it must be a nice place (although cold winters as I recall you saying).
Next time you are over (when will that be?) I’ll show you my pre-digital pics from 1992 and we can swap stories (although mine will be a bit more outlandish I think – “Did I tell you about the time…”-type of thing).
Cool, I look forward to it! 🙂 And we’re hoping to get over just after the horrors of winter are out of the way if you don’t mind!
Probably the best destination in the world for Adventurer.
Nepal & Tibet
Hi John,
I am going to Sydney in 3 weeks so I find your site very interesting.
I a meeting my friend there but I will also be on my own. So I would use some advice if You feel ok to spend it.
Is it a good place for a person alone to sightsee? What are people there like? Is everything in the walking distance or I should use traffic?
Thank You!
Ivona
I found Sydney to be a particularly friendly place and wouldn’t have had any qualms about walking around the place on my own. As always I’m sure there are some dodgier parts of town you’d want to steer clear of at night so have a look at the Lonely Planet guide for advice. The centre of Sydney was easy to walk around and there are plenty of buses to places like Bondi beach and other local destinations. Going on one of the tourist walk-on walk-off bus rides is probably the best way to see Sydney and the surrounding area – it worked for us!
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