How are these Sydney lodging locations - good/bad??
 

Hi again Alan, Andrew/David, Neil, Mucky, and everyone whose been so helpful.

Our departure day for OZ is not far off - the end of this month!!! I've gotten a bit better idea of some places to stay (and a bit more expensive too) and wanted to run the locations past your expert eyes.

Market Street City

Bridge Street City

Pyrmont St

Wentworth

Surry Hills

Hyde Park

Thank you in advance for all your great help.
Ellen

Hi LN

Market Street is smack bang in the middle of the city shopping district. A short 10 minute walk to restaurants at Darling Harbour and about 15-20 mins from The Rocks. State Theatre is on this street. Well serviced area for Buses and trains (from Townhall) though a walk (Darling Harbour or The Rocks) for Ferrys.

Bridge Street, right between The Rocks and the shopping district. Probably closest station would be Wynyard (actually the Sydney city station - not to be confused with Central). Not bad if you'll be spending a bit of time around The Rocks and Circular Quay.

Pyrmont - right on Darling Harbour. Close to Star City Casino. Monorail into town or 10 minute walk. Close to some ferry services. Long walk to The Rocks and only serviced by bus, light rail and monorail. You would need to catch the monorail to either Town Hall or monorail or lightrail to Central Station for train services. Pyrmont has good restaurants also (apart from the Darling Harbour Precinct) and also isn't far from Haymarket (for Chinatown). I assume you would be staying at the Goldsborough here. I don't personally think that is such a great hotel and Pyrmont isn't the best area to be wandering around at night.

Can't really advise - except that it seems to be a bit in no man's land. A ways from Haymarket and the shopping areas. Too far for a stroll to DH or The Rocks.

Surry Hills - I wouldn't. Not unless you know your way around and there is nothing here really to offer for someone on holidays (except perhaps cheap accommodation) and it can get very dodgy at night.

Ellen, if you want me to rank these in order of a nice place to stay, I would submit:

1. Market St

2. Bridge St

3. Hyde Park.

55. Wentworth St

86. Surry Hills

99. Pyrmont St

Sorry - the area "I can't really advise" on is Wentworth Street.

I agree with Alan for his first three suggestions but I would switch Pyrmont with Surry Hills.

I'm not sure what Alan has against Pyrmont but I sure would rank it that far down. Remember Pyrmont and Darling Harbour blend into the same area. And whilst I stick by my comments about wandering the streets at night, there wouldn't be an issue walking from the DH restaurants to the Goldsborough building for example. Remember Star City/Novotel/Grand Mecure etc are all in this part of town too and whilst I'm not recommending any of those hotels I'm just saying that these big hotels saw fit to develop in this area.

Daneille, it's just all those concrete freeways and the overpasses going so close to the windows of the apartments that you could stand in the living room and hand out coffee and donuts to the passing drivers. Surry Hills is not much chop, but at least it looks a bit like "old" Sydney, whereas Pyrmont, with all those awful hotels juggling for a piece of sky, looks like new Orlando!

Oh Dear - should shut up but having lived in sydney most of my life I have to agree with Alan - Pyrmont/Darling Harbour is hideous - an old industrial area that hasn't survived the attempts of "gentrification" - give me the Cross any day.

Hello again Alan, Daneille, and Pat. It's great hearing from you. As I gather from your comments a small apartment near the Queen Victoria bldg on Market St would be good, one on Bridge Street, or one next to Hyde Park.

But I should try to avoid the areas pf Surry Hills, Pyrmont, Potts Point and Kings Cross. I had been looking at an apartment at Azure Apts on Macleay St and I gather that's a fairly iffy area.
I appreciate all this help and thanks to each of you.

LN, there is nothing "iffy" about Macleay St.... it is very definitely undesirable.... unless you can work out a cunning way to walk to the city wiothout going through the Cross!

Dear LN,

From my limited lodging experience
( we stayed at a friend's apartment near Crowsnest and a night at Cremorne Point) I would second a location near QV Arcade or Hyde Park.
I hope you have a wonderful time wherever you rest your head.
AndrewDavid

Alan I think you are a bit hard on the Cross. Maclaey Street is the better part of the area and yes you can do it without going through the Cross proper by walking to the city or the station via Victoria Street which is quite nice. However having said that I think LN would be better off taking your suggestions of Market St, Bridge St or the Hyde Park area. Cheers!

I don't think Alan is being hard on the cross at all. It's awful. Dodge the street dwellers, prostitutes, heroin addicts, pimps and pushers and you might find a few grotty coffee shops and strip joints and people up there for a perve. Not nice at all.

I like checking in with the Austalian forum just for the fantastic banter!!! Keep it going.. The Australia Thread is by far THE most entertaining, informative not to mention polite forum at Fodors! Keep up the great work Alan, Pat et AL.. see you next Month!

If you think the Cross is seedy at night, try it early in the morning. I do however have fond memories of late (like, 1:00 a.m.) dinners at the Bourbon & Beefsteak Bar. My wife often travels to Sydney on business and has stayed at the Cross without concern or incident. Of course the "pros" don't try to pick her up, and the last time she was approached by a junkie for a donation was in Kent Street, in the city. At least the temporary inhabitants of the Cross don't get to take their beers with them as they wander down the street (did someone mention the French Quarter?)

Alan and LN - just curious to know what's wrong with Potts Point, when I lived in Sydney it was considered quite an upmarket area. Agree about parts of Surry Hills and Pyrmont although Pyrmont has a great variety of ethnic restaurants - does anyone know where Kings Cross actually starts and ends?

Thank you so much. As usual you've all got some interesting views and they're very much appreciated.

I'll try to get my reservations in for Market Street or Bridge Street as one of them is where I'll be staying.

Pat I know nothing of Potts Point but if someone was asking me for areas to avoid in the Washington DC area I'd have a couple I'd steer people from. I do believe I'll have to see what it looks like in the daylight when I'm visiting though.

Thanks everyone (Alan, Daneille, Pat Woolford, Neil, Peteralan, and Andrew David) for helping me decide - your thoughts were helpful. This trip should be fantastic!!

Just to add yes the Cross has gotten very seedy to say the least but my comments were in respect to Maclaey Street which I think was the original question. That area is much nicer than the main part of the Cross,...In fact the most desirable harbour view apartments are in tnat street and are currently much desired by folks with more money than I will ever have.Years ago I lived in the Cross...in fact in what is now the very seedy area. In those days it was very cosmopolitan but nowadays since the drug culture it is the pits!I still defend Maclaey Street however but in any case its academic as LN will obviously not be staying there.

Pat, I also remember Macleay St and Potts Point from the good old days, and it was certainly an upmarket area then.... the Chevron-Hilton was right there, and you could see some of the top US cabaret artists. I saw June Christy, Mel Torme, Tony Bennett, Nancy Wilson. I heard that Ethel Merman used to stroll around the area and the shopkeeepers would call out to her, "Hi, Ethel!" When she returned to the US, half the shopkeepers in King's Cross had autographed photos of her in their windows -- Aussies sure do like celebrities who act like "just folks" and aren't too remote! (Elizabeth Taylor and Mike Todd atayed there, too, but there aren't many autoographed photos of them around!)

They were the days when the sidewalk artists used to display their work along the streets of the Cross, and the worst that could happen to you would be that you'd trip over one of their paintings. Now there are no more artists because you can't find an unfouled piece of sidewalk; you still trip over things on the pavement, but whatever it is, it ain't art!

The expensive apartments are still there... and, amazingly enough, the trees along the sidewalk, although nowadays they smell of urine; the rich folk still live there because of the high-rise buildings with harbour views. But the most important feature of the apartments nowadays is the security grilles.

My favourite King's Cross story concerns, however, the mid-sixties, and my first date with a country girl who was on her very first trip to Sydney, at sixteen. I hadn't been to the Cross for some time, and hadn't realised that changes were taking place there, so I suggested it as a great place to look at Bohemian Sydney. We strolled, hand in hand, down the main street. Suddenly, a rough-looking tout approached us and asked if we'd like to rent a hotel room for twenty minutes. After I had shooed him away, my girl, puzzled, asked why on earth would anyone want to rent a room for twenty minutes? About thirty seconds later she went VERY quiet and VERY red, and hardly spoke to me for the rest of the day. So much for that date! And so much for King's Cross!

God Alan, we've just dated ourselves badly. I too lived there in my long-ago youth, just down in Elizabeth Bay Rd from the El Alamein fountain. It wasn't a smart apartment block, just a basement flat, and the cockroaches finally drove us out. Even then I couldn't work out where the Cross started and finished and apparently there's still confusion as dwellers in the same apartment block just off the main strip give their addresses as Kings Cross, Elizabeth Bay, Potts Point and Rushcutters Bay - all with the same 2011 postocode. Macleay st then was quite smart but Darlinghurst Rd was always dodgy.

Hi again!!

I suppose I'll have to fess up as to why I'm not going to Potts Point.

I'd have no problem with it if it were just me cause like Neil's wife I never have any difficulty dealing with people.

But now, I've got this hubby, absolutely cute as a button, and I surely can't have all those ladies of the night making fusses over him can I?

Less than two weeks now my friends!!!

%%- LN

I think basically Pat that Kings Cross really starts at the top of William Street and finishes at the end of Maclaey Street before you get to Woolloomoolloo.There really isn't any Kings Cross postcode and the whole area is officially Potts Point.I used to work half way up William Street which I think is really Wooloomooloo or at least Darlinghurst but my place of business thought either were a bit low class and all our official letters were Potts Point!