Travel Guide: Sydney + Cairns/Port Douglas, Australia
Australia has always been on my bucket list and we were finally able to visit since my brother moved there for a couple years! We decided to all meet in Sydney, which is one of Australia’s largest cities. It reminded me of a NYC vibe - a great blend of city excitement with Bondi and Manly (more beachy places) close by. We were in Australia for about 10 days and split the trip between Sydney (big city vibes) and Cairns/Port Douglas (beach vacation vibes).
We successfully packed the trip with tons of things to do every day and definitely experienced a lot of both areas. Since my brother has been there already, we went to a lot of the well-known places, and found new ones. Here is an overview of what we did! I would recommend everything listed, so if you’re thinking about visiting Australia and don’t know where to start… I hope this helps! :)
Now first… Sydney!
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
We did a lot of walking around in Sydney - checking out a lot of the shopping area, restaurants and tourist attractions. There are even places you can go for a quick day trip like Manly Beach!
We stayed at the Sydney Harbour Marriott Hotel at Circular Quay and it was great! The location was perfect because we could walk mostly everywhere; it was super close to the Sydney Opera House and pier. They have ferries that can bring you to different parts of the city, which I highly recommend! It was easy to get an opal card and use the ferries to explore more - we traveled to Manly and Taronga Zoo! The pretty views from the water don’t hurt either!
Of course our first stop was the Sydney Opera House… A great tourist attraction!
The Sydney Opera House has an Opera Bar right on the water. It has such pretty views, but beware… the birds around here do NOT mess around! They will fly around you and try to eat all your food. One of the birds snatched a croissant right out of our hands (LOL) so they give you little metal plate covers to protect your food! So funny!
We explored as much as we could around Sydney - here are some places that stood out!
The Queen Victoria Building (pictured above) - A beautiful shopping center and pretty central with other cool places around it
The St. Mary’s Cathedral - A gorgeous Cathedral if you’re looking for some cool architecture!
The Taronga Zoo Sydney (pictured above) - We took a fun day trip to this Zoo, which was easy to get to by ferry! I would recommend this since you can see a lot of different animals and it’s a fun day for everyone. You can even go into an area where you can get close to the koalas!
The Westfield Sydney - More shopping! A beautiful mall that’s all marble - it has really nice stores like Off-White, YSL, Balenciaga, Celine, Chanel, etc!
Shopped at Culture Kings - …and even more shopping! This was a trendy/hype Store… it reminded me of the KITH of Australia (lol)! You take a lite up escalator down into it and music is blaring. Mom and dad clearly loved it.
The Royal Botanic Garden - We just walked around here and it was pretty!
Sydney Harbour Bridge (pictured above) - We had a fun father daughter walk across this bridge! You can find the opening (I think there are multiple) to walk up onto it and you can walk across this bridge while seeing beautiful views of the Opera House and Circular Quay!
Food + Treats in Sydney
Cafe Sydney (pictured above) - A super nice restaurant - make sure you make reservations! We ate outside on deck with pretty views + there are heaters if it’s cooler out
Mejico - Yummy and trendy Mexican restaurant with the cutest pink and black striped walls! They had little portioned dishes to share.
Wild Sage - Such a cute cafe with great food! I would definitely go back here. It was usually super busy, but worth the wait!
Buckley’s Craft Beer Bar - (At Sydney Pier) We just had some quick eats here - nachos, pizza and had drinks. This was at the waterfront and just had bar food, but it was at a convenient location
Aqua S Sydney (pictured above) - The best soft serve - A cute little place and near many other asian restaurants! We walked around the area at night and it was a fun place to get treats and snacks.
360 Bar and Dining - A super tall tower in Sydney where you can sit and the tables rotate around a full 360° so you can enjoy the view! It was cool since the tables were constantly moving, but slow enough where you almost didn’t notice. We went here for drinks and the beautiful views of the whole city!
…And some fun day trips!
The Bondi to Coogee Walk - A beautiful walk on the coast (about 3.73 miles) where you can see pretty views, beaches, parks and cliffs that can take about 2 hours or less depending how fast you walk! Once you get to Bondi Beach, you can visit the Bondi Icebergs Club Pool (pictured above) - the famous Olympic training pool that continues right into the ocean. There are a lot of little shops and restaurants in Bondi too that you can check out once you get there! We also stopped at a cute poke place called Fishbowl and loved it!
Manly Wharf (pictured above) - We took the ferry here for a day trip full of shopping, eating/drinking and exploring Manly. We stopped at the cutest Gin + Tonic bar called The Glasshouse that was full of little twinkly lights, yummy drinks, and cute greenery!
CAIRNS / PORT DOUGLAS
After we spent time in Sydney, we flew to Cairns to go to Port Douglas! Port Douglas is a place where people go for “Holiday” aka vacation! It’s a beautiful beachy escape that is only an hour north of Cairns. Port Douglas was a nicer area than Cairns and it makes sense why people vacation there. We visited Cairns because my brother lived there for a bit!
First things first - I have to address how beautiful the hotel was that we stayed at. My family and I stayed at the Sheraton Grand Mirage, Port Douglas Hotel. It was one of the most gorgeous hotels I’ve ever stayed at. I loved all of the (HUGE) windows, the walkways above the water (great photo opp!), and how the first floor walk-outs allowed you to walk down into the pool! The breakfast buffets were also amazing and had anything/everything you could ever want! The hotel was so beautiful and relaxing; I would recommend it to anyone - we loved it!
Here are some photos of the Sheraton Grand Mirage -
Plus, the hotel had a piano that was surrounded by water! Thankfully my brother is amazing at the piano, so we always made him play it whenever we walked by.
Isn’t this the cutest, weirdest, but most charming set up? So boujee, but we loved it! Alex is so good at the piano that he made a girl cry who was listening to him play! He got all the musical talent in the family… everybody go bug him to upload more singing YouTube vids on his channel! :)
Anyway, we did way more relaxing in Cairns and Port Douglas, but here are some fun things we still fit in!
…
Port Douglas
Sail Away Port Douglas (pictured above) - We all went on a boat to The Great Barrier Reef to snorkel! The day we went the water was pretty hard to see in and not clear at all, but it was still fun! I get sea-sick and car-sick, but they had dramamine for people (I would highly recommend just in case). It was fun to just be on the water and spend the day going to another island!
Trinity Bay (pictured above) - Such a beautiful lookout for sunset! Go here! :) It is pretty close to all of the restaurants too, so we went here before dinner for sunset!
Other dinners on the Macrossan Street + Murphy Street, Port Douglas - We had a lot of dinners here! One place was Port Douglas Bel Cibo, an Italian Restaurant where we got caprese, noodles. Also, we went to Zinc Restaurant (modern Australian) and this place had an aquarium in the bathroom! We ate scallops, calamari, gnocchi, steak, risotto, and espresso martinis… this was one of my favorites. We also went to a late night Thai restaurant in Port Douglas around here. It’s easy to walk around the streets there and to pick a random restaurant to go to!
Cairns
When we were in Cairns, we walked along the beach to see the town. While we were there in September, the tide during the day was so low that you could only see dry sand on the shore, which seemed so crazy! We visited some hostels that my brother stayed at while he lived in Cairns, too. There seems to be tons of hostels here because it’s a popular place for backpackers to visit.
Here are two of my favorite food places in Cairns!
Salt House, Cairns Restaurant (pictured above) - This place was adorable! It’s right on the water with cute indoor/outdoor seating. My brother says it’s fun at night too. We didn’t get to experience the night life :D but… just look at the food!!!
Hemmingway’s Brewery Cairns Wharf - A super cute brewery by the water! It’s nice and big - they have great food, drinks, and a pretty atmosphere. Great food = cheeseboard, sesame noodle salad, and mac and cheese bites… yum!
And that rounds out our trip to Sydney and Cairns/Port Douglas! I would definitely add these to your list of travels if you haven’t been because they were awesome. Next time we go back, we are definitely making a stop in New Zealand!
Hope this helps anyone who is thinking of adding Australia to their bucket list! If you have any other Australia recs - leave them in the comments below! I would love to hear :)
-K