Sydney- Australia’s pearl

Sydney is always listed among the world’s top cities, with good reason. The lifestyle, the high quality environment, and the relative peace and friendliness of the city are legendary. Sydney lives up to its reputation rather than lives off it, like other cities. All you need to go to Sydney is some travel insurance and a good traveler’s instinct for having fun.

Sydney basics

Sydney has a lot more than the tourist brochures show. The Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House are just the beginning. Within 5 miles of them is a vast array of different things to see and do, and they’re all easy to find:

• Chinatown is a 5-10 minute bus ride or a 20 minute walk.

• Paddington and Oxford Street are a quick stroll of a few blocks.

• Sydney shopping is all centralized in the CBD.

• Bondi Beach is a few minutes away by train.

• Manly is a ferry ride across the harbour.

• Balmain and the fantastic riverfront all have direct ferry access

• The Inner West and Little Italy are within 20 min by car or public transport

Sydney city is the place to start. Expect a few surprises:

The Rocks and Circular Quay: This is a “tourist zone”, but it’s so good even the locals go there regularly. Restaurants are everywhere, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as the Harbour Bridge and Opera House.

George Street: At the Circular Quay end of George Street you’ll find giant opals the size of your head, followed by upmarket shopping and a strange area around the Queen Victoria Building which includes some great bookshops behind it in York Street, with strange shops selling a very eclectic range of well, anything and everything.

Chinatown and Darling Harbour: Follow George Street down the hill past the cinemas, and you arrive in Chinatown. This is a weird but beautiful mix of the very modern and the old Sydney Chinatown. The food is excellent, safe and cheap. You can feel that you’re in 21^st century Shanghai and 1950 simultaneously. Darling Harbour includes the incredible Chinese Garden, Powerhouse Museum and the Maritime Museum, where you can check out submarines and old destroyers among other things. (It’s also a good place to catch ferries to get back to Circular Quay if you don’t feel like walking.)

Pitt Street and Pitt Street Mall: Pitt Street is one of the most famous streets in Australia. It’s small, old, and a messy but fun place to shop and stroll around. Pitt Street Mall was created to be a fashionable adjunct to the city centre, but has morphed into an extension of Pitt Street, a shopping bag’s paradise. Head down Pitt Street and you go back and forward in time. The huge World Square complex near Chinatown is a truly odd contrast to the little old shops which surround it and sell anything from unknown books and media to fantastic restaurants like Diethnes and a blizzard of coffee shops which aren’t Starbucks.

All due respect to the rest of Australia, but for places of interest per block, Sydney remains Australia’s pearl. Grab some cheap travel insurance and check it out.

Australia Sydney Circular Quay, Sydney, Sydney- Australia's pearl