We Love Sydney!

In this blog:

High Tea at the Shangri-La

Taronga Zoo

Bondi and Manly Beaches

Sydney Opera House

New Year’s Eve on Sydney Harbour

Harbour Bridge Climb

As one of my best friends since my pre-Mommy days lives in Sydney with her husband and now two kids, our trips to Sydney are never the usual tourist experience – so your trip will likely look way different from mine, but hope some of this is helpful to you regardless!  We had the privilege of staying at their house and getting a very “local” perspective and experience, which is wonderful – though probably doesn’t include nearly as much restaurant hopping and sightseeing as I’d normally like to have.  We cooked a fair number of meals in (Australian produce and meats are just across the board off the charts delicious and so much better than what we can get back home) but did get out for a bunch of fun activities and meals, so read on!

High Tea at the Shangri-La

My friend booked us a girls’ High Tea at the Shangri-La Hotel in Sydney, which we were really excited about.  We got Sienna super hyped up about getting dressed up and having yummy fruity teas and finger sandwiches and cookies – so we boarded the Manly to Sydney ferry in our best high tea outfits and showed up at the Shangri-La exactly on time for our booking.  Now, I’ve stayed at other Shangri-La’s and usually find the service to be impeccable.  For this high tea, however, it fell short on a couple of fronts:

1. It just wasn’t little-kid friendly; even my friend’s daughter and her friend, who were 11 years old, found the food to be just too fancy.  And there were zero fruit teas or kid-friendly teas – just caffeinated teas like Darjeeling or Jasmine Green.  They did have hot chocolate, which is what we ended up getting for the kids.  And while us adults found the food to be just lovely, Sienna ended up in tears and really disappointed because, although the food all looked very pretty, it just didn’t taste good to her 5-year old palette (and my daughter loves pate and sushi). 

2. The service just wasn’t great.  Despite arriving exactly on time, we had to wait like 15 minutes to get seated. We had to ask them to get our tea cups and plates set up after they brought us our tea that sat there for about 10 minutes before we were able to flag them down. Then I explained that Sienna didn’t like the food and asked if they could bring some plain French fries and not the fancy truffle chili fries they had on the menu. They brought the fancy ones with chili anyways. Sigh.

Overall, if you’re looking to do this with some Mommy friends it’s best to go without the kids – save the money on their portion and you’ll have a better time! Us adults did enjoy the food, and if we didn't have the girls with us, a few mimosas would have definitely livened this whole experience up for us!

Taronga Zoo

Sydney has multiple zoos, all world-renowned – the Taronga Zoo is closest to our friends’ house so we headed there. The location is amazing – you can see all of Sydney Harbour and the city from various points at the zoo, including the two theaters they have set up for the seal and bird shows. Those are free shows and you should definitely make it a point to plan your day around seeing both – they are really well done, entertaining, and the kids love it! Plus, it’s 15-20 mins off your feet, which makes for a nice break. The zoo itself has all of the usual suspects (lions and tigers and bears, oh my!) along with lesser common ones like capybaras and kiwis. And of course, there is a kangaroo encounter. There are a bunch of play areas scattered throughout as well as a petting farm area, so lots of well rounded entertainment for your little ones. Overall, we had a great day here and I’d highly recommend!

Bondi and Manly Beaches

Probably the two most famous beaches around Sydney are Bondi and Manly, with Bondi being a tourist favorite by far. Our friends live just outside Manly Beach, so we got to see that quite a bit. Bondi Beach was mobbed compared to Manly, and clearly at least half the beachgoers were tourists. It's a much livelier and younger party scene at Bondi - the famous Icebergs pool, the many beach front bars and restaurants serving endless drinks, and graffiti walls advertising "Suns Out Buns Out" (next to which I may or may not have taken a pic with my buns out), all feed into Bondi's appeal to Europeans and Latin Americans. We definitely had a fun day there but probably prefer the more laid back vibes of Manly Beach for a family day out. Now if you're talking about an adulting day, Bondi away! What is super cool about the Sydney beaches is that you can wade out very far and still be just waist deep - though the currents can get quite strong, and can get you from all sides, so your kiddos still need to be solid swimmers to go out there solo!

Sydney Opera House

After two prior trips to Sydney, I finally got the chance to see the inside of the iconic Opera House - we got tickets to see Circus 1903 there and loved everything about this experience! The inside of the Opera House is as you'd imagine - the incredible arches on the outside make for dramatic ceilings and pitches on the inside. The acoustics are great, and the show we saw was fantastic for families. It's a funnier and more family-focused version of Cirque du Soleil, and we thought it was very well done!

We did make the mistake of not having a more solid plan for lunch after the show - we thought we'd just grab a table at Opera Bar, the restaurant running alongside the Opera House, but it was mobbed and we decided to walk across the harbour to the cruise ship terminal and eat at Cruise Bar instead. I would not recommend this - during the day, when cruise ships are docked at the harbour, they completely block what I imagine is a lovely view, and you're staring at a wall of cruise ship. The food was pretty mediocre - the kids menu was fine (the standard pizza, chicken strips, and fish & chips), but the adult entrees were just ok. I did like their espresso martini, so it had one thing going for it - apparently it also turns into quite a party after 4pm, so the food is prob mostly an afterthought there. Lessons learned.

New Year's Eve Fireworks on Sydney Harbour

The single activity that we were most excited about on this trip was watching the NYE fireworks from our friends' boat in the Sydney Harbour - I mean, c'mon! Even though we were only going to catch the 9pm fireworks, then put the kids to bed, it was still going to be epic. As best laid plans go, this one fell apart the day before when our friend broke his leg and ended up in surgery on NYE - we felt awful for him! But our friends insisted that we not sit at home and urged us to go downtown. So we found the one hotel that still had rooms and was within walking distance to the harbour (don't ask what we paid for it) and headed downtown! The Manly ferry pulled up to Sydney Harbour around Noon - and we were already seeing seas of people literally camped out along the prime viewing points around the harbour. Apparently, some camp out overnight to secure a spot. The city closes viewing areas down as they reach capacity, so those prime ones with unrestricted views go FAST, likely before 10am.

We literally had zero idea what we were doing or what we were in for, so we casually checked into the hotel and grabbed a delicious meal at Mr. Wong's around 2pm. Our plan had been to head back to the hotel to change for the night after our meal and then figure out where to go - but when we got out of the restaurant, there were just hordes of people rushing towards the harbour. They close the main streets down most of the day and night, so it all had a very apocalyptic feel to it. We decided to go with the flow - all these people must know something more than we do! We followed the crowd and ended up at a viewing area in The Rocks, which had partially obstructed views of the bridge - but by 4pm in the afternoon, it was the only choice left. We got lucky - they closed this viewing area off about 30 mins after we got there.

So yea, it was 4pm and fireworks started at 9pm?!? Everyone around us had come prepared - blankets, pillows, food, games... We had exactly nothing except the jackets in our backpack. So we used those as blankets to sit on and waited it out. Yes, folks, we got our 5-year old to wait 5 HOURS for fireworks. And with about 100,000 other people in that viewing area. It was NUTS. And then the fireworks went off and they were average at best - because, of course, Sydney saves it all for the real deal at Midnight. Sienna loved them, but we know what real fireworks look like. I toyed with the idea of staying another 3 hours but Rich squashed that fast - no way Jose. And getting out at 9pm was tough, it took us almost an hour to make the 10-block journey back to our hotel amid the sea of people in the streets. I can't even imagine what getting out after the Midnight ones was like with 1 million people! But now that we know all this, we for SURE are coming back to watch the Midnight fireworks from the boat once all of our kids are old enough to stay up, because it WILL be epic and they are really the best in the world!

Sydney Harbour BridgeClimb

On our last day, our wonderful friends took Sienna for the morning and Rich and I did the Harbour BridgeClimb - it was a beautiful day and we got at it bright and early with a 6:25am climb, which turned out to be a smart decision as we would have baked up there 134 meters with no shade! I was immediately super impressed with what a well-oiled operation this is - from beginning to end, it was seamless, fun, and informative, and the views are unparalleled! Our fearless guide was a hilarious older gentleman who was super knowledgable and personable, and made our climb really entertaining. The climb itself wasn't exactly an athletic event, but also not a breeze - it's for ages 8 and up only, and even at 8 years old, there are sections with steep ladders that you can't help a kid with (one person at a time), and I'd hesitate bringing a smaller kid who isn't super brave and sure-footed. We loved our experience and can't wait to take Sienna when she's ready!

Best Things We Ate:

• Hugo's in Manly - by far our favorite restaurant in Manly and most anywhere in Sydney, we come here every time and are never disappointed. They have the BEST drinks, and everything I've ever eaten here is delicious - they're on the water, have awesome pizzas, delicious oysters and other seafood, and the service is great. You really can't go wrong here!

• Mr. Wong's in Sydney - Rich thinks this may be the best Chinese restaurant he's ever been to, and I would not say he's wrong. They have a huge menu that includes dim sum - we loved their duck pancakes, twice cooked green beans and Hong Kong noodles. They are set in this rustic brick warehouse, which gives it a super cool vibe - and although it's high end dining, it's not stuffy or pretentious.

This is really a city that we could see ourselves living in - it helps that we've gotten a taste of what it's like to be a local by staying with our friends. It's just a super easy city - getting around is easy (we took buses and trains and ferries and it was all a breeze to figure out even without our hosts), people are super friendly, and everyone seems to genuinely care about keeping it clean and helping the environment. We walked back to the harbour the morning after New Year's Eve, and you would never know that there were 1 million people there just hours before - no trash, no bodies, no smelly wet spots. Just beautiful Sydney.