Best of Sydney

We loved Sydney. After sailing there for the holidays, and extending our stay a few times, it was hard to leave. I miss the city’s clean streets, happy residents, busy bars and restaurants, excellent museums, and fun festivals. After two months in The Harbour City, here’s what we loved the most. The best of Sydney ranges from cool music venues to funky neighborhoods to free art galleries and hikes.

Best Anchorage: Glebe Bay

My list of the best of Sydney wouldn’t be complete without talking about where we spent most of our time on the boat. In many of the cities we’ve sailed to, like Auckland and Cartagena, we’ve stayed in marinas because that was the best choice. Sydney is the opposite, fortunately, as it has a lot of boats and a lot of great anchorages. Plus, it’s easy to move around as long as you avoid the ferries. You can find good anchorages close to great beaches and others convenient for the fireworks. For us, the best bay for provisioning and sightseeing was Glebe, which has three anchorages.

Glebe, Blackwattle and Rozelle were great anchorages for the selection of safe and convenient dinghy docks. We could park our dinghy at the fish market, the ferry dock, or Rozelle Bay park, all giving us access to different shops, restaurants and transit lines.

Another reason we loved this anchorage is while close to the city, it was usually calm and quiet. Boat traffic was pretty light, and the main noise from shore was dogs and cicadas. The only annoyance was the early Sunday morning dragon boaters and their megaphone-using guides.

The Architecture

What a cool city to visit! It’s great to hop on a ferry and see the city from the water, admiring all the high rises.

Sydney is also a good walking city. From the sidewalks, you can see the older, smaller buildings too. Sydney is modern and classic all mixed together.

If you have the time, definitely go on some ferry rides and watch the city as you pass by. On a nice day, or even a hot day, you can’t do anything better. Take the ferry to a destination, like a beach or island park, or just go for the ride. Sydney is beautiful from the water.

Favorite Neighborhood: Newtown

A city of lots of great neighborhoods (suburbs to them), we found our favorite early. A quick bus ride from our anchorage, Newtown has excellent restaurants, fun bars, and cool street art and nightlife. We went for jazz and rock shows, cheap and fancy eats, and cool beer bars and speakeasies. It’s a lively neighborhood frequented by the young students from the nearby universities with lots to see and do.

Honorable mention goes to the adjacent neighborhood/suburb of Marrickville, which has loads of breweries, a few of which we visited.

Best of Sydney: Live Music and Theatre

After some years in remote places with limited choices for culture, Sydney is like a breath of fresh air. We enjoyed the multitude of options for music and theatre.

In our time in Sydney, we saw free outdoor concerts, went to music clubs, and took in a concert at the Sydney Opera House. We grooved to live jazz in parks and rocked out to Jack White at the Enmore in Newtown. Sydney is such a cultural city that we could have heard good quality live music every night if we chose. Brian and I haven’t been spoiled with that much live music since we lived in Toronto, so it was a treat.

Sydney is also a great place for theatre. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see the indie show about the Australian break dancer, because she threatened a lawsuit. We did finally see Hamilton, and the Sydney production was wonderful.

Festivals

Being in Sydney in summertime meant festivals, and we went to a lot of them. These ranged from fireworks in Darling Harbour to a beer festival and the month long Sydney Fest. If you visit Sydney, take advantage of these festivals. Often they include free performances and music. We saw free live music in The Rocks and in the Walsh Bay arts precinct courtesy of two different Sydney festivals.

Best of Sydney: Art

We found an excellent art scene. Sydney’s streets and buildings are full of beautiful murals. The museums and galleries are top notch, and we saw all kinds of art at various festivals.

Our favorite places for art include White Rabbit gallery, a contemporary Chinese gallery, and the Art Gallery of NSW. Both are free to enter, although you will have to pay for the special exhibits at the Art Gallery of NSW. The latter is a place I recommend visiting a few times, because with two buildings, it encompasses an enormous collection covering lots of styles and centuries.

Eating and Drinking in Sydney

Being in such a large cosmopolitan city, we were spoiled for choice of dining options. Hotel pubs are plentiful and often offer the best happy hours, including oyster happy hours.

Chinatown spreads out to encompass Korean, Indonesian, Japanese and more, with loads of cheap and cheerful lunch and dinner spots. We also found amazing trattorias and cafes, beachfront boites, cool breweries, and a world class sake bar.

This is a city you can return to and always find somewhere new to eat a good meal.

Parks and Paths

For such a big city, Sydney has a lot of green space, which is another thing to love. Sydney’s park are alongside and on the water and all over the city. Big and small parks are a great place to unwind, relax, and look and dogs. There’s always a way to access nature, get some exercise or ride your bike. Some have lots of trees, and most have lots of birds.

Sydney also offers a lot of different hiking trails and paths. Highlights include the Manly to Split walk, and the Bondi to Coogee Beach trail.

We also walked over the ANZAC and Harbour Bridges in Sydney, which are free and offer great views on a nice day.

If you really need a nature break from Sydney, The Blue Mountains are only two hours away.

The Geocaching Community

On one of our first nights in Sydney we went to a geocaching meetup at a brewery. It was full of fun and friendly local geocachers, and led to one of the reasons we extended our stay in the city. Yes, we stayed longer to go to a Geocaching Block party. We made lasting friendships in New South Wales’ geocaching community from Sydney north while we’re cleaning up Go in Port Macquarie.

Above all, I miss the vibe of Sydney. It’s a well loved city and is very safe. Except for my bicycle being stolen, we never felt any negativity from the residents and definitely weren’t nervous there. For a big city, the natives are friendly and upbeat. We shared tables with locals at bars, got directions at tram stops and advice on ferries, and really liked meeting people. Why shouldn’t they be happy? They’ve got everything they could want close by.

What are your favorite things to see and do in Sydney? I know I didn’t see everything!