Sydney: The World’s Best New Years Eve Destination?

Sydney is considered by many as the ultimate destination to celebrate New Year. Having finally experienced it myself, I find myself inclined to agree, it is definitely up there with must-see New Years Eve locations. From the atmosphere, the sights, the city itself, and then the infamous firework display, Sydney really does have it all. But what is it really like in the lead up to the count down?

From a Brits perspective, Sydney is the coveted location which is always shown on the TV before everything else. Australia welcomes in the New Year first, as far as our media is concerned. Although this is actually incorrect, and a whole bunch of places (New Zealand included) actually embrace the coming of a New Year before our Aussie friends, it remains the worldwide “first” so to speak.

Every year, millions of people flock to Sydney to see it for themselves. You only need to take a look at the shores to see just how busy the city gets in the lead up to the celebrations.

During our trip, we landed early in the morning on New Years Eve, so that we could spend the day exploring the city a bit before we headed out onto the harbour by boat to celebrate. This was somewhat a luxury trip, and we found ourselves staying in the Hilton and living the lavish life. Hence the dreadful picture of me that I posted here. Once we eventually found the hotel (after walking 20 minutes in the wrong direction, yay!) we dropped off our bags and headed out to take a few pictures and just see the place. Neither of us expected to see so many people out and about.

The weather was working in our favour, high 20s to low 30s consistently throughout our trip. Despite the heat there were still plenty of people packed into unshaded, uncovered areas around the coast. I really kind of felt sorry for them, holding a spot the whole day with the sun beating down on them. But the fireworks afterwards definitely made up for that suffering.

After we passed through the barriers at Circular Quay, we could finally head towards the Opera House (although the majority of the walkway was sectioned off for the celebrations). We ended up deciding to get lunch and sat down with a brilliant view of the Harbour Bridge while we watched people prepare for the night and get into position.

After eating the best fish and chips I’ve had in a long time (even flake counts, despite its inferior taste in comparison to cod!) We decided to go and have a wander around Darling Harbour and find out where we were supposed to be boarding our boat for the evening. We only had to walk 15 kilometres or so round trip to get to the jetty and back to the hotel. Not bad if you ask me!

Then we cue New Years Eve celebrations. Wow. I mean, I can’t exactly argue with an open bar on a boat to watch the fireworks. It’s certainly topped anything I’ve seen or done at New Year before, and is probably going to remain that way for a very long time. I’ll spare you the picture from here, and drop them into another post because lets be honest, they’re worthy of a whole dedicated page so you can check them out uninterrupted.

Moving along nicely. Day 2!

We actually left the hotel pretty early so that we could head out and take some pictures of the city before we left. It was a good idea. I’ve never seen anywhere so deserted as Sydney on New Years Day. Except for Adelaide. Adelaide always seems to be deserted.

We made the rounds by heading up to Circular Quay and around the now magically opened up and cleaned waterfront. I have no idea how they managed to get all the fencing and gates down, and clean the place up, in the space of a couple of hours between the end of the celebrations and us dragging ourselves out of bed to go for a wander around. Either way, it was a job well done!

I said it was deserted, the Opera House still managed to pull in a decent crowd to come and take a few selfies.

We actually came to settle down in the botanical gardens, which is where we took the next picture from. It’s an excellent place to just chill out and relax, and it’s really peaceful there. So we ended up spending quite a bit of our day lazing around, doing a whole lot of nothing and just enjoying this view:

I’ll be honest, I kind of like that I got some poor unsuspecting persons face in the picture. Imagine if they ever actually see this 😀

Anyhow, the TL;DR is, Sydneys NYE is amazing. You should totally go there. I definitely recommend it. So much so that I’m contemplating going back for New Year 2015!