Insight Guides - Insight Guides Explore Sydney (Travel Guide eBook)

How To Use This E-Book

This Explore Guide has been produced by the editors of Insight Guides, whose books have set the standard for visual travel guides since 1970. With top-quality photography and authoritative recommendations, these guidebooks bring you the very best routes and itineraries in the worlds most exciting destinations.

Best Routes

The routes in this book provide something to suit all budgets, tastes and trip lengths. As well as covering the destinations many classic attractions, the itineraries track lesser-known sights, and there are also excursions for those who want to extend their visit outside the city. The routes embrace a range of interests, so whether you are an art fan, a gourmet, a history buff or have kids to entertain, you will find an option to suit.

We recommend reading the whole of a route before setting out. This should help you to familiarise yourself with it and enable you to plan where to stop for refreshments options are shown in the Food and Drink box at the end of each tour.

Introduction

The routes are set in context by this introductory section, giving an overview of the destination to set the scene, plus background information on food and drink, shopping and more, while a succinct history timeline highlights the key events over the centuries.

Directory

Also supporting the routes is a Directory chapter, with a clearly organised AZ of practical information, our pick of where to stay while you are there and select restaurant listings; these eateries complement the more low-key cafs and restaurants that feature within the routes and are intended to offer a wider choice for evening dining. Also included here are some nightlife listings, and our recommendations for books and films about the destination.

Getting around the e-book

In the Table of Contents and throughout this e-book you will see hyperlinked references. Just tap a hyperlink once to skip to the section you would like to read. Practical information and listings are also hyperlinked, so as long as you have an external connection to the internet, you can tap a link to go directly to the website for more information.

Maps

All key attractions and sights mentioned in the text are numbered and cross-referenced to high-quality maps. Wherever you see the reference [map] just tap this to go straight to the related map. You can also double-tap any map for a zoom view.

Images

Youll find hundreds of beautiful high-resolution images that capture the essence of the destination. Simply double-tap on an image to see it full-screen.

2019 Apa Digital (CH) AG and Apa Publications (UK) Ltd

Table of Contents

Recommended Routes For...

Architecture

From the rugged sandstone of the citys oldest buildings (), Sydneys urban fabric offers diverse delights.

Glyn Genin/Apa Publications

Art lovers

Explore the shock of the new at the Museum of Contemporary Art ().

Glyn Genin/Apa Publications

Children

Let the kids run loose among the varied attractions of family-friendly Darling Harbour ().

Glyn Genin/Apa Publications

Food and drink

Sydney is a city of many flavours, so grab some Chinese dumplings ().

Shutterstock

Green spaces

Enjoy the diverse charms of the harbourside Royal Botanic Gardens ().

Tourism New South Wales

Historians

Get an insight into Australias earliest days at The Rocks Discovery Museum ().

Getty Images

Photographers

Wait your turn with the wedding couples at Mrs Macquaries Chair ().

Shutterstock

Swimmers

Savour the tranquillity at Bungan Beach ().

Glyn Genin/Apa Publications

Explore Sydney

Welcome to the de facto capital of the Lucky Country a fast moving modern metropolis built around a beautiful blue harbour. But Sydney is also an economic powerhouse, with a progressive arts scene and a wonderful proximity to nature.

For most visitors, their Australian experience starts and ends in the seductive embrace of the Harbour City. Which is appropriate, because Sydney is Australias first city in nearly all senses of the word. Canberra might be the modern capital, but Sydney was the first European settlement on the continent. It remains the countrys largest metropolis, its pulsing business and financial engine, and is home to its most recognisable manmade icons: the Harbour Bridge and Opera House.

A panoramic view of the downtown Sydney skyline

iStock

Beginnings

When youre staring star-struck at the magnificence of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House, or standing amid the glittering glass-and-concrete jungle of the Central Business District (CBD), it is easy to forget how young a city Sydney is. Just 240 years ago, it was little more than a few squalid huts clinging to the edge of the foreshore on The Rocks.

Indigenous people had inhabited the area in glorious isolation for around 45,000 years before a Yorkshireman arrived and ruined it all for them. Dutch explorers had touched on parts of the Australian continent centuries before, but they saw little of value in the big brown land and it was left to Captain James Cook to discover Sydney in 1770. He didnt hesitate to stick a flag in the land and claim it for king and country setting a precedent that British backpackers still proudly observe on Bondi Beach to this day.

It took another 18 years before the first European settlement was created in 1788, with the arrival of the First Fleet under Captain Arthur Phillip, who tore up the original name (Albion) and christened the city after Lord Sydney, the British Home Secretary. Phillip only narrowly beat the French to the beach, though (for more information, ).