Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside (Sydney Harbour National Park)

Member Name: moronboy

Product:	Sydney Harbour National Park
Date:	20/07/00 (56 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Stunning place, lovely people

Disadvantages: It's a long long long plane ride

Sydney is like New York, a city which looks and feels like a capital, even though it isn't. Though on a map it looks like it sits on the coast, it is in fact a short distance from the mouth of the river, which is very wide, and so at times Sydney feels like a city on a lake. You can use ferries as a convenient way to get around, and pretty much everywhere you go there's water.

Sydney was the start of my trip to Australia and I don't have a bad word to say about it. The views from the Harbour Bridge are just magical: just walk across to the middle and you'll see the Opera House in context, not just the white shapes in isolation as they're so often photographed. The Opera House itself is one of the most beautiful buildings in the world, and it's worth walking up to it to see the intricate tiles and look at the boats on the harbour.

The botanical gardens are another must see; there are parrots and cockatoos flying around like pigeons do in UK parks (take some nuts and the cockatoos will feed from your hands), and there are also hundreds of huge beautiful flying foxes sheltering in the trees . We were lucky enough to see them all flying around. The Art Gallery is superb (in particular, the Aboriginal gallery), and funnily enough, the Aquarium, which is in Darling Harbour, is absolutely brilliant. Unlike a UK one which has fish from all over the world, every creature in there is found somewhere in and around Australia, and if you aren't going to do any diving, an afternoon spent here is well worth it. Also, Darling Harbour is lined with spectacular places to eat.

I would also recommend a daytrip to Manly on the ferry, which is a beautiful and relaxed town with great beaches and little centre with great fish and chip shops and parrots in the trees. We really didn't want to leave Sydney, and I would advise every visitor to Australia to spend some time there.

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