Escape to Sydney during Melbourne Cup

Overlooking the Darling Harbour, Four Points is in one of the best locations in Sydney. It is close to the nightlife of King’s Street and Cockle Bay Wharf, 10 minutes' walk from the train stations of Wynyard and Town Hall, 5 minutes' walk from the bus station on York Street, and couple of minutes' walk to the ferry at Darling Harbour.

Four Points is about 20 minutes from the airport. It costs about $25 by cab to get there; there are also airport shuttles for $9/person that drop you off right at the doorstep of the hotel. We arrived at the hotel at 9am (the hotel's check-in is 3pm). We left the luggage with the concierge and left to get some breakfast. They got a room ready for us in under an hour and had our luggage sent up. I’d booked a city-side room over the Internet at a special, pay-for-two-nights-stay-three-nights offer that gave me an absurdly low price of $117/night(even the low-end hotels in the city area of Sydney were at $130/night, with higher rates for weekends). Considering the low rate, I did not even ask if an upgrade was available.

The hotel automatically upgraded me to a harbour-side room – the only drawback being that it was in the smoking section. The receptionist offered to hold a non-smoking city-side room if we decided that the smoking section was not to our liking and did not want an ozone cleaning if the smoke was heavy. I am very sensitive to smoke and was apprehensive, but the room was perfect in every way. The smoke was non-existent inside the room, and we only could smell it in the corridor on the way to the elevators.

The room on the fourth floor had a lovely harbour view, from where we could watch the people on the Pyrmont Bridge and the bright lights of the harbour-side shopping complex. It had a huge king bed with luxurious linens and lots of pillows. The bathroom was marble-tiled and was quite spacious. On our last day in Sydney, we were so tired that we chose to stay in the room, sleep in, catch some TV, and watch the ferries go by. The room was comfortable and inviting, and never once did we regret staying in.

Guru had to extend his stay by another day initially and then discovered it was to be two days. They offered to keep him in the harbour-side room for the price of a city-side one, even when we found an Internet rate off the SPG site. We kept asking them for changes more than once, and throughout, the staff were very courteous and extremely helpful.

Like the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Sydney Opera House has long been a symbol of modern Sydney. Omnipresent on numerous picture postcards, it has to be seen to be believed. We let out a gasp at the sheer scale of the structure. Made of more than a million ceramic tiles, the SOH is huge – take a walk around the structure.

The SOH is designed to look like a large sailing ship from a distance and has a total of five halls, with the concert hall and the opera hall being the largest. The original architect was Jorn Utzon from Denmark, who won a design competition in 1957. Utzon, fed up with the meddling of various people, resigned from the project in 1966 and has never personally visited the finished product. The SOH went over the estimated budget by a whopping $107 million and was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on October 20, 1973. The first opera performed was War and Peace.

We could not watch a performance at the SOH and had to make do with the guided tour of the interiors. There is also a guided tour of the back stages, but it is only once a day, and very early in the morning at that. The tour we took was very informative and lasted about one hour. On our guided tour was a gentleman (also a tourist) who had worked on the staging of the very first War and Peace, and he gave additional information on how the opera hall stage has changed. When you purchase a tour ticket, you also get a free cup of coffee or tea or a soft drink at the café. You cannot take pictures of interiors, but can get some lovely pictures of the Harbour Bridge, and the lounge at the SOH has the best views of fireworks over the Harbour Bridge on New Year’s night.

The best photos of the SOH are from the Circular Quay, from the sea and the rocks (opposite the SOH). Any closer, and you will only be able to shoot parts of the great structure.

Jenolan Caves are about a 90-minute drive from Katoomba. The road is winding and very narrow in places. We had to drive very carefully and had to honk every corner to warn cars from the opposite direction.

The beginning of the Jenolan Caves is very dramatic. The road is cut into the mountain amidst lush green forests. When we got to Jenolan caves at about 1 pm, the parking lot was full, and we had to drive up the mountain to another parking lot. To get down from the parking lot, we had a very, very steep walk down. This track took us to Charlotte's Arch, a beautiful photogenic location that would stop you in your tracks to reach for the camera. And where was mine at that time? In Guru's bag, and he was way ahead of me trying to get down to the booking office to book the 1:30pm cave tour (which was booked out anyway)!

The lady at the bookings office told us to go to the guide’s office for the tour. We had lunch at one of the cafés and waited near the guide’s office for the tour to start. It was about 5 minutes past 2pm when there was a small crowd of people, but no guide to be seen. It was only then that someone told us that the meeting point was the beginning of the Lucas Cave, a 1-minute run from the guide’s office!

The Lucas Cave included the famous Broken Pillar, the Cathedral, and the Shawl. The broken pillar is supposed to be a single column broken by the shifting of the rocks over the years. The Cathedral is a high-ceiling cave with awesome sound effects. And yes, people can get married here. The tour ends with a great view of the road winding through the mountain arch and the mysterious blue river.

The tour involved a lot of climbing up and down, which was not really tiring since the tour stops every often. In some places it was very musty and downright creepy. We could see names of early explorers (in the 1880s) that were burned with candle into the walls and ceilings! The worst part about the tour was the guide! He was no doubt very informative, but he was also downright boring, cracking dreadful jokes with the little children. What could have been a half an hour-paced tour was dragged to an hour and 45 minutes!

When we finally finished the tour, it was a quarter to 4pm; we had that huge mountain track to climb to get to the parking lot, a 2-minutes drive to make it to the road before it closed at 4pm for repairs, and our feet were dead tired. One of the guides gave us a ride to the parking lot, and we were just able to make it to the road before it closed.