The Travel Sage
A Little Bit of Sydney
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After Kangaroo Island, we stayed 5 nights and 4 days in Sydney. This was the third place we stayed on the trip with a full kitchen, and by this point we had our routine down – the first thing you do after you arrive is go to the grocery store and the liquor store (but not in that order)! After traveling all day, that was pretty much all we had the energy to do.
Our first full day in Sydney was actually spent outside of the city on a day tour from Sydney to see kangaroos and wombats. So that left us really only 3 days in Sydney. On our first day in the city, we walked down to the popular and historic area of called “The Rocks”. We started by visiting The Rocks Discovery Museum. It was a nice little free museum housed in a historic building with exhibits about the history of the area.5
Our next stop in The Rocks was the Lord Nelson Brewery which is the oldest pub brewery in Australia. It was Mark’s mission to try one of their award-winning beers. And what better to go with that beer then a traditional Aussie meat pie with mashed potatoes and smashed peas!
After lunch we checked out nearby Barangaroo Reserve. I’m not sure exactly what I expected but, although there were nice views, wandering around the park on our own wasn’t very interesting. Perhaps I should have signed up for an aboriginal heritage tour or a historical tour about The Rocks being a penal colony when the area was first settled.
The next destination on our walk was to see the iconic Sydney Opera house. My first impression was that it seemed smaller in person.
The harbour that the Opera House sits on is called Circular Quay. This is a major tourist hub with lots of dining options.
Although I was already exhausted at this point, we decided to walk back to our apartment through Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden.
We also walked half of the way through Hyde Park.
That was the end to a long day of walking. Rain was forecast for our 3rd day in Sydney and we decided that was a great reason to stay in and rest. Given that our entire trip was going to be over 5 weeks, we were trying to pace ourselves. For our 4th and final day in Sydney we decided to see the outskirts of town and try out their mass transportation system.
I was very impressed with the many options for getting around Sydney and the outlying area. The trains, buses and ferries all had an easy system of automatically charging riders by having them tap on and off. Unlike most major cities I’ve visited, you didn’t have to purchase and replenish a special card for your fare. You could use any credit card for the same price; you just needed to be sure to use the same card when tapping on and off. And there is a cap on how much they will charge you over a certain period of time. You can use all of the modes of transportation as much as you want and never pay more than $16.80 on a weekday, $8.40 on Saturday/Sunday/holiday, and $50 in a week. (Prices as of April 2023.)
We had thought about taking a harbour cruise or signing up for a hop on, hop off boat, but then we realized that riding the ferries would be much more economical and flexible on times. So, on our final full day in Sydney we mapped out an itinerary that ended the day with 3 ferry rides. Our day began with a train ride to Sydney’s Olympic Park which was originally created to house the 2000 Olympic games. I chose this park because I heard that it was a good birding spot with nice nature walks, but I also chose it because there was a ferry terminal at one end of the park. This allowed us to take a train there and a ferry back to downtown Sydney.
Olympic Park was massive with a lot of different sections. We tried to stay mainly along the water and in the more green parts.
We came across a couple of old ships that were grown over with trees. I looked it up and the place is called Shipwreck Lookout in Homebush Bay. However, “ship graveyard” is probably a more appropriate name since the ships didn’t actually wreck here, they were just laid to rest here.
After a very long walk through the park, we made it to the Olympic Park ferry terminal just as a ferry was pulling up. I was really impressed with the ferries. They had comfortable seating inside plus plenty of places to take in the views from out on the deck. Unfortunately, none of the other ferries we took were as empty as this one.
It was quite a long ferry ride from Olympic Park to Circular Quay in downtown Sydney, followed by a ferry to Manly Wharf. Below is a map of the ferry routes we took, starting from the left. Mark mostly slept while I snapped photos.
Look closely for the people on the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the photo below. Not only can you walk across the bridge, for a fee, you can walk over the bridge!
The photo below was taken coming in to downtown Sydney, where we switched to another ferry heading to Manly Beach.
Manly is one of Sydney’s more popular suburbs. It’s a trendy area with a relaxed vibe that is popular with surfers and sunbathers due to it’s nice long stretch of sandy beach. The ferry from downtown Sydney takes you to Manly Wharf and from there it is just a short walk to shops, cafes and Manly Beach. I thought the building murals with old headlines were pretty cool.
One of the nice things about Manly was that it had many pedestrian only streets and alleys.
This situation perplexes me a bit…
We ended our day with a ferry ride back to Sydney.
The next day we were leaving Sydney on a 14 night Holland America cruise that ended in Auckland, New Zealand. I was really looking forward to it. I love cruising and hadn’t been on one in 5 years, primarily due to the pandemic. We had some time to kill between hotel checkout and cruise check-in, so we walked around a part of Sydney we hadn’t been to yet. We walked to Darling Harbour and then crossed over the river on the Pyrmont Pedestrian Bridge.
We had beautiful weather for our ship’s departure out of Sydney Harbour. Be sure to check out our trip report of our cruise on the ms Noordam.
6 thoughts on “A Little Bit of Sydney”
Wow, I love this report, thanks Cathy!!
This is very well written and informative.
‘ini, excellent report- writing and photos, as with all of your reports! You show some older parts of the city, neighborhoods and buildings, but mostly the impression is that Sydney looks very modern and clean, with a very modern skyline. Maybe because of the prominence of the harbor, the bridge, the Circular Quay, and of course, the Opera House. Such a beautiful photo of that beautiful sailboat!
As good as this one is, Kangaroo Island is still #1 and the one with the wombats is #2. I guess anyplace with cute animals is going to be hard to top!
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