Best atmosphere | Best bookshops | Best bushwalks | Best coffee places | Best long walks | Best movie houses | Best museums and galleries | Best parks | Best pubs | Best rides | Best shopping places | Best theatres | Best urban and park walks | Best water experiences | Best wilderness walks | Great Views of Sydney | Worst places to go

The Great Views of Sydney

The lookout at West Head in Kuring-gai Chase National Park.

Barrenjoey lighthouse near Palm Beach.

The Spit at sunset in winter.

Mrs Macquarie's Chair in the Domain on New Year's Eve or Australia Day.

Taronga Zoo.

The foreshore walk in the Royal Botanic Gardens.

The top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge after you have climbed it, on a BridgeClimb.

Jones Bay at Pyrmont.

Warrah Trig station and lookout, Brisbane Water National Park.

Hornby Light at South Head.

North Head

The Manly ferry

Dobroyd Head while on the Manly-Spit or Spit-Manly walk.

Cape Baily

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The best atmosphere

• Royal Botanic Gardens
• Sitting on Dobroyd Head, Middle Head, North Head or South Head on Boxing Day (December 26) watching the start of the yacht race.
• Fireworks on Sydney Harbour, New Year's Eve (December 31, 9 pm, Janusary 1, midnight), or Australia Day (January 26).
• Avalon shops to see unflappable beach culture.
• A day-night cricket match in January.
• The Manly Jazz Festival, the first weekend in October.
• The shops along George Street near Haymarket.
• Norton Street Leichhardt, for a taste of Italy.
• Chinatown
• Cabramatta.

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The best parks

• Royal Botanic Gardens
• The Domain
• Hyde Park
• Sydney Harbour National Park
• Centennial Park
• The Royal National Park

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The best bushwalks

• The Spit to Manly walk
• The Basin track in Kuring-gai Chase National Park

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The best urban and park walks

• The Spit to Manly walk (yes, it's in under two headings -- it is a variable track). Here, I mean the portion from Manly to about Forty Baskets beach or Reef Beach. It gets progressively harder, but the first 2 km or sop from Manly are wheelchair-accessible.

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The best long walks

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The wilderness walks

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The best shopping places

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The best theatres

• The Ensemble Theatre, offering theatre in the round, in a converted boatshed on the harbour, great restaurant, parking is a bit of a challenge. You can walk there from Milson's Point station.
• The Opera House Drama Theatre: close to the city and transport, close to food and drink, great views, good companies, top playwrights.
• The Wharf Theatre: watch the parking restrictions, or walk from Circular Quay.

• Dendy Quays (you can take a drink in, and when you walk out, turn right to the pricey but good Chinese restaurant.
• Cremorne Orpheum: excellent refurbished art deco.
• The Chauvel in Paddington reopened in July 2006.
• The Ritz at Randwick
• Avalon for a return to the fifties.

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The best museums and galleries

• The Art Gallery of NSW
• The Australian Museum
• The Museum of Contemporary Art
• The Museum of Sydney
• The Powerhouse Museum
• The Australian National Maritime Museum

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The best bookshops

• Abbeys, near the Queen Victoria Building.
• Gleebooks
• Dymocks: this is a chain.
• Kinokuniya has an excellent range, and the most obnoxious 'security' thugs anywhere, who insist on inspecting your bag on departure.
• Constant Reader, in Crows Nest.
• There is another conspicuously absent chain. They tried to blackmail smaller publishers.

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The best coffee places

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The best pubs

• The Orient Hotel, near Circular Quay. Best during the day.
• The Coogee Bay Hotel at one end of the Bondi-Coogee walk. Not so good late at night.
• The Hero of Waterloo. Lovely old pub.
• The Steyne Hotel, Manly. Good pub food, might be noisy to stay there. Fights late at night.
• The Lord Nelson. Can be nasty when the money market types are there. You will know if they are. I am told the rooms are good.
• The pub at Watson's Bay on a sunny weekday. Food is so-so, beer is good, so is the wine, the views are brilliant.

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The best rides

• The Manly ferry
• The 190 bus
• The train from Central to Wollongong.
• The Watson's Bay ferry.
• The Rivercat to Parramatta.

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The best water experiences

• An outing on one of the Sydney Heritage Fleet vessels.
• The Manly ferry

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The worst places to go

• The Hydro-Majestic, Medlow Bath in the Blue Mountains. Eat your heart out, John Cleese -- this place is more gothic than Fawlty Towers on drugs. They closed the one part that had great views over the Megalong Valley, and instead of lunch, pressed "high tea" on us at 12.45 pm. Eating a dead ferret steeped in cabbage water for a fortnight would be preferable.
• The Bistro Mozart at the Opera House (near the Bennelong Restaurant, and renamed every few months). Appalling food, inept service, stupid staff, stupendous prices. Stick pins in your eyes instead.
• Gunner's Tearooms, Georges Heights, near Balmoral. We caught them double-dipping on a credit card (for an amount in excess of $200!), and the service was abysmal, the food was appalling. As the amount that they tried to claim twice indicates, they are also over-priced, though the view is superb. It is just as good at the Fort Museum on North Head, where the service is friendly, the food is plainer but much cheaper, and access is better.
• Shaky Tables in the Hunter Valley. This had a hat until recently, but lost it -- and no wonder! When I complained to the chef that my dessert was served on a badly cracked plate, he asked truculently "Is there a problem?" The owners were away at the time, and maybe should consider changing their chef.

This file is http://members.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/syd/toplists.htm, first created on March 7, 2006. Last recorded revision (well I get lazy and forget sometimes!) was on March 17, 2008.