Summer in Australia's Biggest City

The biggest and very likely most-visited city in Australia is home to many famous Australian landmarks. Easily the most famous one is the Sydney Opera House. It is a pleasant city with gardens, waterfronts, old quarters like The Rocks, and skyscrapers. You can find lots of accommodation, eateries, or night spots in Sydney. There are cinemas, markets, and festivals, so it is hard to get bored. Most people also visit one of the beach towns, with Bondi and Manly being the most famous ones.

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The Central Business District, where you can find the yellow AMP Tower, is easily explored on foot. You can walk as far as the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, which are not so far away. For other destinations, it's best to take public transport in the form of trains, buses, and boats. Or you can take the monorail around Darling Harbour for a change.

The Central Business District is the skyscraper haven of the city. Its skyline is one of the most beautiful skylines I have ever seen. From a distance it seems quite compact and well organized, with the tallest buildings centrally located and the lowest at the edge of the CBD. It is the commercial heart of the city and of the country. What is regarded as the CBD runs from Darling Harbour about 3km inland. The most striking and tallest structure here is the strange-looking yellow Sydney (previously AMP) tower (309m, Pitt Street). You can go up to the tower (A$14 to A$23) for a view on the city or to eat in the revolving restaurant.

The main street in the CBD and the oldest street in the country according local rumours is George Street, starting at the historical area of "The Rocks" near the Sydney Harbour bridge. It runs south for 3km to end at the other side of the CBD near the Central Station. If you walk along the street starting at "The Rocks", you will first pass some tall glass office buildings, looking shiny and new. 500m further south you will pass the Town Hall area, with the historical Town Hall and St. Andrew's Cathedral. There are many expensive shops in this area as well. Just a little eastwards from the Town Hall along Elizabeth Street is Hyde Park, a nice park with tree-lined avenues, a few fountains and a war memorial. Further south is another skyscraper area on World Square. This is a good area to go out in the evening with many bars, pubs and eateries and the huge George Street cinema complex with no less than 17 theaters! If you continue south you will pass through Sydney's Chinatown with the usual Chinese gates and statues, excellent Asian restaurants and Chinese supermarkets. This area continues until central station.
Most other landmarks of the CBD, like the Botanical Gardens, St. James Cathedral and the parliament of New South Wales can be found on the eastern edge of the CBD, in MacQuarie Street. This street is the most eastern running street of the CBD, leading from Hyde Park all the way to the famous Opera House. This is the governmental centre of the city.

The area around Circular Quay is home to most of Sydney's attractions. The most famous one is, of course, the Sydney Opera House. It looks like white shells or the sails of a ship. If you come closer, you will see that the different plates it is made of actually are light yellow in colour. They look white due to the reflections of the sun.

Another famous landmark is the Harbour Bridge. You can even climb the bridge like an alpinist. At the foot of the bridge is the oldest quarter of the town, the Rocks. There are all kinds of shops and a tourist information centre inside the nice colonial buildings.

Right in Circular Quay is the excellent Sydney Aquarium (A$14 to A$27), where you can find many species of fish, including a few white sharks. The highlight of the aquarium is the underwater tunnel, where you can walk underneath the fish.

Taronga Zoo is located next to the Parramatta river, at the opposite site from the centre of the city. It lies on Bradleys Head road in the suburb Mosman. It is easily reachable by bus or by car, but definitely the most scenic way to come to the zoo is taking the ferry from Circular Quay in Sydney's city centre. A round trip ticket, including the entrance ticket to the zoo, will cost you 20-35 aussie bucks. Even if you don't like zoos or when you are short of money, you should take the ferry here at least one time (5AU$ one way), cause it offers superb views on the Parramatta river, the Harbour bridge, the Opera House and the CBD of Sydney.

The lower entrance to the zoo is just next to the wharf. A second entrance is foreseen at the upper edge of the zoo (it is built on the slopes of a hill) for people coming by bus or car. The zoo was started during the 1920's, quite old for a zoo. You can see this at the entrance gate, a nice neo-classical building. Just after the lower entrance is a bassin with seals and sea lions, with a seal show twice a day. Next stop is the African part of the zoo, with zebra's, camels and giraffes. A little bit further they do a bird show twice a day, with parrots and birds of prey. They even half a huge eagle flying over the heads of the public. Amazing!

Other very interesting parts of the zoo are the Asian part with Asian elephants and tapirs, the aviary where you can walk between storks, ducks and pelicans, the excellent serpenteria, with boa's, crocodiles, lizzards, toads and frogs, and the exquisite Australian nightlife experience. The latter one is not a pounding techno music bar full of drunk people (which can easily be found in Sydney, especially on Friday and Saturday evenings), but a darkened hall (your eyes need to adapt to the lack of light for a few minutes) packed with interesting Australian night creatures, like flying foxes, bats, possums, and an aquarium with platypuses. We were unable to spot these strange and timid animals, looking like a cross-bred between a duck and a beaver, but the movement in the water made it clear that they were somewhere.

You can spot many other animals in the park including wallabies, kangaroos, emu's, gibbons, gorillas, foxes, tigers, bears, etc. Last but not least, the zoo offers some spectacular views on Sydney Harbour and the city centre.

Manly is a beach resort town located across the harbour at a distance of 12km from the Sydney city centre. It's not as famous as Bondi Beach, but apparently it's much quieter. I have never been to Bondi Beach, so I can't compare. Basically it is not much more than a suburb of Sydney, with around 35000 inhabitants.

But the town has got more to offer than only a commuter's accommodation. Manly's city centre is located on a peninsula, with the Sydney Harbour on the west side of the town and the Pacific Ocean on the east side. The Manly beach, located at the Pacific Ocean is a decent sand strip great for sunbathing or swimming in the sea. As this is one of the most famous beach towns in the Sydney area, there are of course lots of bars, restaurants, souvenir shops, etc.

We did a day trip to Manly from Sydney. In the morning we took a half an hour ferry ride from Circular Quay directly to Manly. It costs 6AU$ one way and runs the whole day. From the ferry you will get a beautiful view on Sydney's CBD, the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. You arrive at the Manly wharf, and from there we walked through the town to end at the Manly beach. In this part of town there are many shops and bars. From all parts of Manly you can make many beautiful walking trails. From Manly beach we did the 30 min Fairfax walk on the peninsula in the south of the town, ending at the wharf.

We continued our walk past the wharf for 1 hour (part of the Manly scenic walkway) to end in Dobroyd Head where you can find a nice secluded beach, some beautiful scenery and a beautiful view on the Sydney skyline. You can walk further along the scenic walkway to Sydney, but we decided to take a bus back to the city centre, because it was still a 2 hour walk!

The main gateway to the Blue Mountains National Park is Katoomba, located 100km west from Sydney and very convenient to reach by train in about 2 hours. You can stay in Katoomba much cheaper than in Sydney.

The tourist information is a half an hour's walk away from the centre. There is a gorgeous viewpoint here, where you can see why the name of the mountains is blue. Due to the eucalyptus trees the park gets a bluish colour.

You can walk into the gorge from the viewpoint, where you will pass nice rock formations and waterfalls. One of the rocks has got three "heads," hence their name, "The Three Sisters".