Sydney, Australia (overnight) 2026
On the morning of March 06 we were docked in Sydney for an overnight visit. Sydney has two cruise ports, which you could just call good and bad. The good one is Circular Quay and is right in the center of town between the opera house and the bridge, while the bad one is called White Bay and is far from anything interesting, so a lengthy shuttle or cab ride is required to see or do anything worthwhile. The conventional wisdom is that ships small enough to sail under the bridge are sent to White Bay while the larger ships dock at Circular Quay near the opera house. On our two previous visits here, on the old Amsterdam that was a sister ship of Zaandam, we were sent to White Bay, but this time we were docked near the opera house even though we were small enough to sail under the bridge. We aren’t sure why, especially since the HAL World Cruise was in Sydney at the same time we were this year. But it sure was a major difference. We ate breakfast by a window looking out on the harbor bridge. How cool is that?
As I said above, this was our third overnight visit to Sydney and you can see the other ones at these links:
https://baderjournal.com/2016/02/28/sydney-australia-day-1/
https://baderjournal.com/2016/02/29/sydney-australia-day-2/
https://baderjournal.com/2018/06/27/sydney-australia/
We decided on the first day to ride the Hop On Hop Off (HOHO) Bus around Sydney. We had walked around before, of course, but we have found in other cities that the HOHO bus will often take you places you might not otherwise see & it can provide a useful orientation to the city. Its first stop was about a block from the port so after breakfast we walked over there to buy tickets along with our friend and tablemate Karen. This part of Sydney is interesting, among other things, for the dramatic contrast between old Victorian buildings closer to the dock and soaring skyscrapers looming over them from not too far away. From the top level of the bus (by far the best place to sit if you want to see the city, unless the weather is bad) we could look up at these tall modern buildings as we drove beneath them.
So here are some things we saw on the bus ride that we found notable. All these photographs are from the top of the bus since we didn’t “Hop Off” anywhere. thinking instead we would visit some of these places on foot the next day. First, we drove past the Art Gallery of New South Wales, founded in 1872. Its current building opened in 1897, with additions added several times thereafter. Just under the top of the building are arrayed the names of 32 famous artists who had no works in the gallery at the time it opened. The two equestrian statues, called The Offerings of Peace (left) and The Offerings of War, have been there since 1926. Second, the Sydney Tower is the tallest structure in Sydney. Opened to the public in 1981, the Tower is more than 1,000 feet tall.
The Central Railway Station is the largest and most used station in Australia, averaging 250,000 people per day. Sydney’s first train station opened near here in 1855 and the current structure opened in 1906. It is on the site of a former cemetery, requiring the relocation of the remains of more than 1,000 people before construction began. The 281 foot tall clock tower was added in 1921.
One Central Park is a mixed use (residential and commercial) building that opened in 2013. It is notable for the vertical hanging gardens covering most of its outside walls. It is the tallest vertical garden in the world. The gardens are hydroponic and are made up of some 85,000 plants, including more than 250 Australian species.
Crown Sydney (sometimes called One Barangaroo for its address) is the tallest building in Sydney.at 890 feet. It has 75 floors. It opened in 2020 and includes residences, a hotel and a casino. It has been quite controversial throughout its development and continuing today, with opponents labelling it “Packer’s Pecker” because of its rather phallic shape (James Packer was chairman of Crown Resorts when the building was constructed).
As the tour ended we passed by the Harbor Bridge and drove up the street to the spot where it began.
A park was next to where we got off the HOHO bus. In the park was a statue of William Bligh of Mutiny on the Bounty fame, who was the fourth governor of the convict colony here from 1806 to 1808. The park also had some nice flora, including the flower below which was new to us. Looking for a nice place for lunch we walked around awhile and ended up back by the cruise terminal, which had a sign that helpfully told us exactly where we were. Still looking for lunch we walked down the waterfront further into Circular Quay and found a place serving fish & chips. On the way we passed an ibis; we had seen some in the wild in Darwin but in Sydney they frequent places where they might find food dropped by humans (kind of like pigeons in the US). This whole area looks a lot different from what we remembered from our first two visit and we think the place where we had the fish & chips was new since then. After lunch we had gelato (of course) before walking back to the ship.
After dinner we came out on deck 3 on our way back to our room to see if there were any nice twilight pictures to be had. There were, of course. Before the sun set we got a picture of the opera house and another of a bunch of yellow ferry boats at the end of the quay. After the sun set and all the lights came on, we had pretty spectacular views of the opera house, the Harbor Bridge, Luna amusement park on the other side of the bay under the bridge, and a row of buildings at the inside end of the quay that we think might be where we had lunch. It appeared after dark that there was a party going on at the opera house, since we could hear loud music all the way to the ship, but we were told later that they had moved a concert outside there. These nighttime sights were all new to us because we had never been docked in this area before.
Well, we had hoped on the second day to visit on foot some of the places we had seen from the HOHO bus but it was not to be. On our last visit here Rick was sick and only stirred from the ship for the opera in the Opera House because the tickets for our group were in his name. Surely that couldn’t happen again, right? Wrong. By the morning of March 26 Rick was in no shape to leave his bed, much less the ship, so we stayed on board all day. (If this happens a third time it will probably be our last visit to Sydney.) He was feeling a little better by sail away time (around 5:00 PM) and prevailed upon Mary, against her better judgment, to agree to his joining her on deck 3 (not far from our cabin) to watch the ship’s departure.
It was foggy and gray, but sailing through Sidney harbor is always worth seeing. We ended up with dramatic pictures of Luna Park, the Opera House, and Denison Island (used for punishment during early convict days and fortified in the mid 19th century, although its armaments were obsolete by the time it was finished). There was, as usual, a group of climbers on top of the Harbor Bridge as we passed (this is a popular, expensive and physically demanding tourist attraction).
So that was the end of our visit to Sydney (the second less than optimal one in three tries) and of our visit to Australia. We headed out into the Tasman Sea for a two sea day trip to New Zealand, which Rick hoped would be sufficient time to fully recover.
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