July 24, 2025 – Sydney (Author: J)
After a decent night’s sleep, we woke up to another beautiful day in Sydney. It was once again clear with highs in the mid-60s Fahrenheit, which is as comfortable as can be for sightseeing as far as I’m concerned. As usual, I was up first, so I visited the gym, followed by enjoying some coffee and a few chapters of my book in the room. Even though we didn’t pay extra for a harbor view, we did have a view of the harbor – just not the opera house or bridge. We also had a great view of several conference rooms in the neighboring office building, which was almost close enough for us to read the presenters’ slide decks during meetings.
Once D and P were awake, we set out on foot for the Rocks, a historic colonial neighborhood established in the late 1700s. I was interested in learning more about the history of Sydney, and P was interested in eating pancakes. The Rocks had something for both of us.
We started with breakfast at Pancakes on the Rocks. This is a dinner style restaurant with an extensive selection of pancakes – a slightly more upscale Australian version of IHOP. It currently has a bunch of bad reviews on TripAdvisor, but I don’t think the pans are warranted. The quality to price ratio struck us as more than fair for a restaurant in a touristy area. (US travelers, keep in mind that the menu prices in Australia generally have the service charge and tax built in, so what initially looks more expensive than US prices often is not). P had berry topped pancakes, I had macadamia, and D had eggs (always eggs) with a side of plain pancakes. The specialty pancakes come with ice cream on top, so P was delighted.
After breakfast, we wandered around the neighborhood for a bit before stopping in at the Rocks Discovery Museum. This museum, set in a historic house, covers the history of the neighborhood and features artifacts from the area. It’s not a big museum, but we thought it was well presented. It’s also free, so there’s no reason not to stop in if you are in the neighborhood.
When we were finished exploring the Rocks, we walked back to the CBD for some shopping. Our first stop was Ultra Football to see if they had restocked their jerseys. This time, P found 2 jerseys in his size for local football teams: 1 for Sydney Macquarie and 1 for Melbourne FC. He purchased both. (He’s always mindful of offending local fans when we travel, so he saves all his souvenir jerseys to wear at home). Then, I rectified my failure to pack my fleece jacket by purchasing a new fuzzy fleece. It’s pink and fuzzy and generally looks like someone skinned a Muppet; I was just as pleased with my purchase as P was with his.
We also went into the Queen Victoria Building, a Victorian era market building that is now a shopping colonnade. There are lots of nice places to eat in the QVB, but – after our sit-down breakfast – we decided to get something quick and simple for lunch. That meant leaving the QVB and heading to a food court for falafel (me) and burritos (P & D). After lunch, we went back to the Intercontinental for a swim and rest.
Inertia exerts a strong force on P. Whenever we take an afternoon rest, it is a struggle to get him out of the hotel room again. So, it was with great effort that we pried him from the room around 4 pm and coaxed him across the street to the Museum of Sydney. We chose the museum because it was literally across the street from the Intercontinental. That made it one of the few locations in town that we could reach before things started closing at 5 pm.
The Museum of Sydney covers the history of Sydney, including in-depth exhibits on the history and culture of the First Nations people and a diorama of the First Fleet, the boats from England that carried the first European settlers to the continent. There is some overlap between the subjects covered at the Museum of Sydney and the Rocks Discovery Museum, so you may not want to combine both into a single day. But we thought both were worth visiting. After exploring the galleries and coloring some native animal pictures to hang on the museum wall, we went back to the Intercontinental to get ready for dinner.
We had reservations at Midden by Mark Olive. Midden, which is located at the Sydney Opera House, has a menu based around indigenous Australian ingredients. One thing to know is that the restaurant has an outdoor dining room. On a dry winter evening, it was a pleasant place to dine under the heat lamps while admiring view of the Harbor Bridge. On a wet or hot day, it might be less pleasant.
We started our meal with some cocktails, the Australian cheese platter, and an order of damper, a traditional Australian bread. For my main, I had the vegetarian option – stuffed eggplant. D had barramundi. P had the kids pizza with bush tomato sauce. Bush tomato, I am told, tastes like tomato. For dessert, we shared a pavlova. Overall, this was a good dining experience. The only complaint was that it was difficult to find our server when we were ready to order a second round of drinks. This was a pattern at many of the restaurants we ate at in Australia. Is it a critique of service standards, or a critique of our alcohol consumption? Who’s to say. After dinner, we had a short and pleasant walk back to the hotel, where we turned in for the night.
Travel Monkeys 