Sydney

Sydney is a city built around its harbour, and it never lets you forget it. Every ferry ride is a sightseeing cruise, every headland walk ends at another slice of blue, and the two great icons — the white sails of the Opera House and the steel arc of the Harbour Bridge — frame a waterway that is somehow both the city's front door and its playground. But Sydney is more than its postcard. It is a beach city where locals swim before work, from world-famous Bondi to the quieter ocean pools carved into the rocks at Bronte and Coogee. It is a food city too, its dining shaped by waves of Asian and Mediterranean migration, best explored in the laneways of Surry Hills and the seafood of the fish market. Ride the ferry to Manly, walk the coastal path above the surf, and catch the sunset from a harbourside bench with a takeaway flat white. Relaxed, outdoorsy and unhurried under a near-permanent sun, Sydney makes the good life look effortless — and shares it generously.

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