I’m not sure what I expected of Sydney, but it was more overwhelming than I had anticipated. Not in any uncomfortable way, but how you might imagine any city of 4.5 million people to be. Normally, I am a fairly confident urban navigator and the person my friends throw the map at when they’ve lost hope, but a week around the mostly rural South Island of New Zealand must have softened me. New Zealand cities are great big small towns, but Sydney is a real city, more Americanized than New Zealand. It has a real skyline, an immense immigrant population and a tangled public transport system that travels through diverse suburbs.
After several frustrating bus rides and some time exploring the central business district (bustling and interesting, but more upscale and thus less welcoming to backpackers than NZ), I found I liked it better from a distance, looking at it from the Botanical Gardens jutting out into the harbor, especially because my wanderings provided an excellent opportunity to view Sydney’s most iconic building. Yep, the Sydney Opera House. It is completely riveting. I could not stop staring at it, whether across Sydney Cove on a park bench, walking across the Harbour Bridge or right on the Opera House steps. I told myself that I really should step away from the city’s most obvious landmark and dig a little deeper in my travels, but I liked watching the clouds shift and light change over the roof.
Though gravitating toward green space is very Kiwi of me, my devotion to the touristy reminds me more of D.C. You may be jaded, but I still find myself peeking at the Lincoln Memorial whenever I cross 23rd Street on my way to Safeway, and I feel lucky to be able to do so. In Sydney, I was close to 10,000 miles away from the District, but I liked being able to trade dodging important people on the pavement for tramping on the grass and admiring an extremely famous gleaming white building or two. I did end up tearing myself away from the first thing in the guidebook to get a feel for Sydney’s neighborhoods, but some things are iconic for a reason.
