SYDNEY · AUSTRALIA
The harbour, the sails, the long way round.
Cruise past the Opera House and under the Bridge, climb the great steel arch, then trade the city for eucalyptus valleys in the Blue Mountains and cellar doors in the Hunter Valley. The best of the harbour city and the country around it.
Only in Sydney
Three things you can only do here.
Plenty of cities have a waterfront and a famous skyline. Only one lets you walk inside those white sails, climb to the top of the harbour bridge, and stand in a UNESCO wilderness an hour from downtown.
Inside the sails
The Sydney Opera House
There is one building like it on Earth, and it is here on Bennelong Point. Step inside the white shells for a guided walk through the concert halls, the foyers and the engineering that took fourteen years to raise, then watch the harbour ferries slide past the glass. The view of it from the water is free; the story behind it is the tour.
- 1 Sydney: Opera House Guided Tour with Entrance Ticket
- 2 Sydney Opera House Official Guided Walking Tour
- 3 Sydney: Sunrise Kayak, Opera House & Under Harbour Bridge
Up the Coathanger
The BridgeClimb
Sydney is the only city that lets you clip into a line and walk to the top of its harbour bridge. Climbers head up the great steel arch the locals call the Coathanger, 134 metres above the water, for a slow loop with the Opera House, the Heads and the whole blue sweep of the harbour laid out below. Dawn, day or sunset, it is the view the postcards are shot from.
- 1 BridgeClimb Sydney
- 2 Sydney: Guided Daytime Summit Climb of Sydney Harbour Bridge
- 3 Sydney: BridgeClimb Sydney Harbour Summit Night
An hour from the harbour
The Blue Mountains
Few great cities keep a UNESCO wilderness this close. Ninety minutes west the sandstone drops into eucalyptus valleys so vast the haze of oil off a million gum trees turns the air blue, gave the range its name. Stand at the Three Sisters, ride the steepest railway in the world down into the rainforest at Scenic World, and you are still home for dinner.
- 1 All Inclusive Blue Mountain,Scenic World,Lunch,Koalas,ferry
- 2 From Sydney: Blue Mountains Full-Day Trip
- 3 Blue Mountains Small-Group Tour from Sydney with Scenic World,Sydney Zoo & Ferry
Start here
If you book one thing in Sydney.
More travellers choose this than anything else in the city. The easy first pin in the map before the rest of the trip falls into place.
The classics
Sydney's Most Popular Tours & Tickets
The Opera House, the harbour cruises, the Blue Mountains and the BridgeClimb. The days most visitors lock in first.
Where to begin
The days a Sydney trip is built around.
Harbour cruises, the Blue Mountains, the Hunter Valley, the Opera House and the winter whales. The experiences most trips are planned around, and the best of each.
The big question
How to see the harbour.
Everyone comes for the harbour; the only question is how you want to meet it. Here are the three best ways onto the water, and who each one suits.
An hour west
Where the city ends and the bush begins.
The most popular day trip out of Sydney, and an easy one. Coaches and small-group tours run up to Katoomba for the Three Sisters and the lookouts over the Jamison Valley, drop into the rainforest on the world’s steepest railway at Scenic World, and swing by a wildlife park for kangaroos and koalas before the run home. Sunset tours catch the valley turning gold.
See the best Blue Mountains day trips →Two hours north
Cellar doors and long lunches.
The oldest wine region in the country, and the classic Sydney indulgence. Small-group tours drive up through the vines to the Hunter’s best cellar doors for tastings of the Semillon and Shiraz it is known for, break for a long lunch and a local cheese board, and let someone else do the driving. Some pair the wineries with a wildlife park or a hot-air balloon at dawn.
See the best Hunter Valley wine tours →First light
The harbour, before the city wakes.
Slip a sea kayak onto the water at dawn and the harbour is yours alone, glassy and gold, the Bridge a black arch against the sunrise and the Opera House catching the first light. An hour later the ferries take over. For that first hour, it is the quietest the most famous harbour on Earth ever gets.
See the sunrise kayak tours →Winter on the water
When the humpbacks pass the Heads.
From May to November, tens of thousands of humpback and southern right whales travel the coast right past Sydney on one of the great migrations on the planet. Boats run out through the Heads into the open Pacific to meet them, and the big ones breach close enough to soak the deck. Winter is not the off-season here; it is whale season.
- 1 Sydney: Whale Watching Adventure Cruise
- 2 Sydney Whale-Watching Cruise Including Lunch or Breakfast
- 3 Sydney: 2-hour Express Whale Watching Cruise
Where Sydney began
The Rocks, down its oldest lanes.
Right under the Bridge, The Rocks is the sandstone quarter where the colony first landed in 1788, and it still wears its history in cut-stone warehouses, hidden cobbled cut-throughs and some of the oldest pubs in the country. Guides walk you through its convict beginnings by day, and after dark the ghost and true-crime tours take over the same lanes.
See all 23 Rocks walking tours →By place
Pick a corner of Sydney.
The Harbour for the icons. The Rocks for the history. The Blue Mountains for the lookouts. The Hunter Valley for the wine, Port Stephens for the dolphins, and Manly for the ferry and the surf.
By activity
Or pick how to spend the day.
Cruise if you want the harbour. Helicopter if you want it from above. Kayak if you want it quiet. Plus the Blue Mountains, the wineries, the winter whales, the walking tours and the ghost tours after dark.
Plan it
Three perfect days.
First time in Sydney? A long weekend that pairs the harbour with the country around it.
Just added