Paula Barnes (00:42.574)
Today I'm going to talk about the prettiest city or harbour in the world. I know it's a big call because a lot of people will say their city or their harbour is the prettiest in the world, but I do. think that Sydney Harbour is the prettiest harbour in the world. And let me get started and let me explain why. I'm talking about Sydney today because that's where I'm from. That's where I grew up. That's where I was born. And yeah, I...

I go back a lot because my kids are there so I'm there all the time so it kind of feels like I'm I still live there even though you know I'm not there as much as I am in other places but I still am there a big chunk of the year.

I want to talk about Sydney because it is a very special place for me and I also think I'm very blessed to have called this home and will call this home one day again when I retire. It has everything. It has the beach, it has the harbour, it has the cafes, it has the heritage...

as much as Sydney can, Australia can, the heritage area. It's where Captain Cook started, landed. It's where, you know, you can go to the zoo that's on the most prettiest harbor and then you can catch a ferry to another side. You've got the harbor, you've got iconic things like the Harbor Bridge and the Sydney Opera House. So let's get stuck into Sydney and when you should visit and why you should visit. You can visit

To be fair, think Sydney is one of those places you can actually visit every season. But in particular, think summer. Summer in Sydney, or spring, spring's my favorite, but summer in Sydney is pretty special if you are a person that likes to go to the beach. There are things about Sydney that you can't find in other capital cities in around Australia. You cannot go to the city and then 15 minutes later be at a beautiful beach or

Paula Barnes (02:57.454)
an amazing harbor. There are pretty places around Australia but I just think that Sydney, you just have it. Let's get started. It is different to where a place that I grew up. When I grew up there, the nightlife was huge. It was a main part of what Sydney was about but it's not that anymore. It's about getting up early, going for a run along the beach and having a

having brunch. We some amazing brunch places so if you are a person like brunches this is the place to be. I'll go through what I think a good five days should look like and we'll do it maybe in seasons. the best way first of all the best way to get from the city to where you stay it depends on where you want to stay. If you're staying in the city the best option is probably the train.

If it's one of the beaches then a taxi is probably a better idea or an Uber. I think that with Sydney getting around is probably probably Ubers I have to admit or if you're just staying in the city you've got the monorail you have got the trains and you've got the buses. Getting a car also is really good. If you're just going to stay in the city

But if you're not going to stay in the city and you want to travel outside of the city or to the beaches I would get a car, I'd hire a car from the airport makes life easier and I would stay maybe at one of the beaches So I would look I would visit Bondi, but is it the beach that I would stay at? Probably not You've got a few beaches along there. You've got Bronte, you've got Tamarama, you've got Coogee, you've got Maroubra

Or you could go over to Northern beaches and you could go and stay in Manly or Fairlight or further up in Narebin. It's a bit far, you could, know, there's so many options if you want to stay by the beach and the beach culture in Australia and Sydney in particular is that, you know, you can stay at the beach all day and you can have lunch there and swim in the water and you can go for a walk from,

Paula Barnes (05:14.286)
Bondi all the way to La Perouse now. Actually I think you can go all the way from Watson's Bay all the way down to La Perouse which is a very big stretch of beach or coastline. And some really pretty paths. If you only got five days this is what I think you should do. Go to the Harbour Bridge. You have to go to the Harbour Bridge. Do the Harbour Bridge climb. I actually really enjoyed it. I know it's kind of like...

If you are afraid of heights like I am, don't worry. It's actually not so bad because you're close enough to the side to feel like you're going to fall. I've found it fine. I actually did. found it fine. So I would do the Harbor Bridge and I would do the Harbor Bridge climb. I would also go to Opera House. And you know what? I recently did just a few months ago for the first time ever since actually I did this when I was in primary school and I am old. So it was a long time ago, but I did a tour in

of the Opera House and that was actually a little bit fun actually I learned a lot from it. You could do that or you can go and see a show you can pick up tickets from there and see a show that's also very good there's a beautiful restaurant in there I don't know if you want to splurge a little bit Ben Long's is is in there which is a beautiful restaurant overlooking the harbour if not you've got the Oprah bar which is nice to sit out outside and have a drink or sit out there and have lunch it does get busy on the weekends

So I would avoid weekends and maybe go during the week. You've also got restaurants nearby. So all around Circular Quay, you've got beautiful restaurants, which leads you then to the rocks. I would kind of do that all in one day. I would also the next day, if you want to explore a little bit more, I would do, which I also did just recently for the first time.

is I did a tour, a walking tour of the rocks. So that was really interesting to find out what the history of the rocks is. And then I went off and watched some movies and stuff. That's what I do. I like to watch, read books or watch movies about what they've talked about. And I found it really interesting because we aren't that old. Our country isn't that old. So the history there is interesting because there's some things there that are still as they were.

Paula Barnes (07:34.474)
I would then go down around Darling Harbour. You can walk there or you can catch a train there or a bus or the monorail. Actually no, I don't think you catch the monorail at Darling Harbour but you can walk there. It's just super simple or a taxi or an Uber. But it's not a bad walk and in Darling Harbour, all around there you've got Cockle Bay and Barangaroo. You've got some beautiful restaurants so you can sit and have a lovely lunch.

and have a look at the harbour from the harbour though from Darling Harbour area you can go to watch a movie there or if it's the weather's not great or in winter you can go whale watching from there but in summer you can go jet setting from there you know those jet boats that you can you can do those around the harbour that's a lot of fun or you can do a cruise you can do like a dinner cruise or a lunch cruise that will take you all around the harbour

So that's two days. You know, you have to go to the beach. So I would then do the Coogee to Bondi walk, because it's not as far. And I would start off maybe in Coogee. Have a look around there. Sorry, no. I would start off in Bondi. Have a look around there. You can eat at Icebergs. That's kind of iconic. It's very nice. You can go up upstairs.

and have dinner or lunch in icebergs or underneath icebergs the restaurant there is actually like a like a RSL I don't know what that's equivalent to in other countries but it's cheap and cheerful food the food's nice you don't have to get dressed up and it's got a beautiful view so you can have lunch there before you go off on your walk and then I would have lunch at Kuji because you've got some really cute cafes and it's a it's a nice

It's a nice beach, it's smaller. You can go for a swim and the waves aren't. It's more of a bay than a beach. you've got as not, the waves aren't as big. You can do either way actually. That was what I would just spend the day at the beach and doing the walk. That would be my day two. My day three would be you could go and either drive or go on a tour to...

Paula Barnes (09:53.774)
and Kernel is about a 30 to 40 minute drive I'd say from the city and it is Captain Cook's landing spot. there's a little museum there, is his where exactly where he stayed, sorry where he stopped, he landed. There is a beautiful walkway there. In winter it's whale watching. You can see whales go past all the time but in summer you can go for a swim, there's a beach there, you can go for a walk, you can have a picnic.

It's quite pretty. It's a quite and that's that's pretty much a whole day. You could if you had your own car, you could stop off at Cronulla on the way and there's a beautiful walk along those beaches as well. And there's great area for cafes and and things like that and some little boutique shops. Then the next day, I would definitely go to get a ferry and go over to Manly. Have a look around there.

You can spend a whole day there. There's so much to do. There is, you can go swim, you do lots of walks, you can have a picnic. There's lots of shops. So there's quite a bit that you can do over there. And then I would catch the ferry back or you can stay over there. Stay overnight over there. There's a couple of big hotels that are overlooking the water. That's also a nice alternative. And then you can, if that,

If you've got seven days, which is better, the following day, I would consider going on a picnic. Now there's some beautiful picnic areas and some walks around Sydney. there is, you could go up to Watson's Bay, you can have a picnic there, or you can go and have seafood in Watson's Bay and kind of sit overlooking the beach at Doyle's. There's also an outdoor area in a pub.

that has some great food so kind of explore that area. You could also catch a seaplane to whale beach there's a lot to do around that area and if you have one last day then you can go into the city you can go into Chinatown you can have some dim so so we in Australia and you know I don't know why we do it there and I don't know if any other country does it but I know they don't do it in Japan is when you go to teppanyaki they they

Paula Barnes (12:17.708)
It's more like a show. They like throw eggs at you and stuff like that. You can do that down in Chinatown, which is quite fun. And you can spend your day shopping in the city. You can go and see a matinee. There's a couple of theaters there. You can do that night or during the day. If you wanted to just go food hunting, there's a few areas there where you can go and have Korean barbecue. There's a whole street full of it.

your final day you can just spend in the city looking around. You know, I could do two weeks. I could do a full two weeks itinerary there, but I'm not. I'm just gonna give you those seven days because it depends on the season that you go depending on what you wanna do. Cause there's the Taronga Zoo. It takes you a whole full day. There's the aquarium. You know, there's so much to do in...

different areas. can go to Katoomba, there's a day out in the Blue Mountains and through the sea the Three Sisters. You can go down the central coast to the entrance. There's a lot to do in Sydney. I guess I'm a little bit biased just because I'm from there, but I would highly recommend also, you you can get a Opal card, which is your transport card.

Well these days you can just tap, you can tap your own card but don't be caught especially on ferries because the ferries they will pick you up and give you a big fine so you make sure that you are tapping on and tapping off when you when you get on. The other thing the other things that I would say is that in terms of in with Australia it isn't a tapping tipping culture so but if you do have really really good service your tip if you go and

Paula Barnes (14:24.522)
a taxi, you round up, you you round it up and you can use your cards pretty much everywhere. It's not like other countries where, you know, cash is king. You can use your card pretty much, I would say pretty much anywhere now. I don't remember the last time I had cash in my wallet in Australia. I would also book tours and stuff online before and a lot of that's because things get booked up pretty quickly.

especially in peak season and peak season obviously is our summer which is November, December, January, sorry, December, January, February. Christmas is fun in Sydney because it's warm and you know, it's just a feel good time. There's school holidays in January so things, prices go skyrocketed. I actually, my favorite season is September, October, November. I like spring.

Spring in Sydney is beautiful warm days but cooler nights. So to me that's kind of perfect. There are a lot of restaurants. There's so many restaurants that you can, we have some of the most beautiful restaurants, not just in the city, but you've got inner city like Walla Mallu or Alexandria, Redfern, all those places have got really great restaurants now, great vibe, even Newtown.

or you could go to places like that never used to be beautiful but are really cool now like Marrickville they've got some really great breweries and restaurants and cafes so it depends on the type of trip that you are after if you're going with kids there's so much to do there's so many places to visit you know whether it's um that wildlife park what is it Featherdale wildlife park or

you know, going to treetops, you can go to treetops where you climb from tree to tree. There is, I mean, there's a lot to do. In summer, you can go to the SCG, there's cricket matches, there is stadiums, we've got the Homebush Stadium with lots of concerts and sporting events. You've got Allianz Stadium, which has got sporting events and also some great concerts.

Paula Barnes (16:45.272)
So it's worth looking up what's on at the time that you go because we do have a lot of music festivals and stuff like that as well if that's your thing. And again, it really just, it just depends on what kind of things that you like to do. Now in terms of souvenirs, like if you're not a magnet garper person, like I'm not, there's some really great souvenirs to take home. One would be obviously Vegemite.

Tim Tams and you have to try Tim Tams and if you try the Vegemite properly because Vegemite is amazing if you eat it properly. But you also got the sheepskin, the Uggs, get the proper Uggs not the Chinese version. You've got you know little teddy bears, koala teddy bears and koala bear stuffed animals and stuff like that that you can take home. But there's also some really good like artists like I know that

people are gonna go, oh my gosh, he's so old. But Ken Doane, so Ken Doane has an art gallery. think he still has a shop in Circular Quay with, he does these prints of Sydney, but really pretty and vibrant colors and stuff like that. So he's worth, I know, very old school, but it's worth having a look at.

And then there's lots of parks and lots of places to walk, lots of walking tracks. So if you like the outdoors, Sydney's a place to go. And in the city, you've got all those bikes, these e-bikes that you can go from place to place and everything's so close. So that is a real affordable way to get from like those e-bikes to get from place to place. Definitely not around the beaches because it's a bit hilly and a bit hard to get around.

Generally speaking hire a car if you're not saying that if you're not saying city hire a car if you are staying city do not hire a car because driving in the city is crazy and also very expensive unless your hotel allows you to park there then Add a bonus, but it can be quite expensive That's all that I need to That I want to cover in this episode anyway, because I think I will do a part two

Paula Barnes (19:07.63)
Sydney down the track but more about seasonal travel maybe maybe I'll do that I don't know but anyway in the meantime thank you for listening and if you liked this episode do not forget to leave us a review so that other people can find us in the meantime happy travels and I'll see you next time