Five Days in Sydney - Access Sydney

The Three Sisters rock formation at Katoomba above the Jamison Valley — Photograph by Stu's Images, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Five days is Sydney properly, plus one day out of it and one day eating in the suburbs where the food actually is. Both of those are the parts visitors skip and residents would not.

The plan

Days 1–3 — As above.
Day 4 — ⭐ the Blue Mountains — About two hours west from Central by train to Katoomba, through the suburbs and then up onto a sandstone plateau cut by enormous valleys. The Three Sisters and the walks down into the Jamison Valley are free and are a short bus or walk from the station. ⚠️ Katoomba is around a kilometre above sea level and can be fifteen degrees colder than the coast, in cloud, when Sydney is in shirtsleeves. ⭐ Check where the Opal boundary falls before you go — a good part of this line is inside it.
Day 5, morning — ⭐ Cabramatta, about an hour by train, for what is one of the great Vietnamese food neighbourhoods outside Vietnam. Or Lakemba for Lebanese. Neither is on any highlights list and both are better than most things that are.
Day 5, afternoon — Back in for what you skipped: Taronga by ferry and cable car, or the Barracks, or an hour in the pool at Bronte.

The harbour and the Harbour Bridge seen from the hillside at Taronga — Photograph by Robert Linsdell from St. Andrews, Canada, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

⚠️ Do not try to add Melbourne or the Great Barrier Reef. Australian distances are not European ones — Melbourne is around nine hours by road or an hour and a half by air with half a day gone at each end, and Cairns is further from Sydney than London is from Moscow.

The Rocks seen from the water, wharves and warehouses below the city towers — Photograph by Dietmar Rabich, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

What this plan is built around

Not a list of sights, but the constraints. ⭐ The fare caps — daily, weekly, and a much lower one on Sundays — mean that once you have hit a cap every further trip that period costs nothing, so a ferry-heavy day is cheaper than it looks and doing all your travelling on one day beats spreading it. ⚠️ The weather decides the order, not the plan: a clear day goes to the harbour and the coast, a wet one to the free galleries and the Barracks, and every plan here can be reordered on the morning without losing anything. ⚠️ The UV inverts the usual rhythm — the middle of a summer day is the worst time to be on an exposed clifftop walk and the best time to be indoors. And ⚠️ Sunday is the cheap day and the busy day at once, so use the cap and start early.

The promenade at Darling Harbour with flags along it and the water on one side — Photograph by Adam.J.W.C., Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0

Other lengths

3 daysThree Days in Sydney A weekA Week in Sydney 2 daysTwo Days in Sydney

Checked on 7 September 2026. Fares, caps and journey times change — confirm before you travel. All sixteen sights, one page each, in Landmarks & Sights.