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Australia Travel Wildlife Park, Hunter Valley, The Blue Mountains, Northern Beaches
This note may not catch you before your Barcelona departure. Have a grand time!
As mentioned, the Toronga Zoo & the Sydney Aquarium are both wonderful for families to visit. My grandkids loved the keeper talk by the spider expert at Toronga, especially because he had some blue-tongued skinks they could pet after his talk. And HUGE spiders to look at, including the famously venomous Sydney Funnel Web.
Featherdale Wildlife Park is easily accessible from most areas of Sydney & it's small enough to keep everyone from getting too tired.
http://www.featherd ale.com.au/ aboutus/
On the way to the Hunter Valley is the Australian Reptile Park. It's about an hour north of Sydney, easy to find. Again, my grandson was most enamoured of the spider exhibit & the Tasmanian Devil keeper talk. Me too, come to that. http://www.reptilep ark.com.au/
The Blue Mountains are a long one day visit from Sydney, but well worth trying to work out a plan. Perhaps staying overnight in Katoomba for a couple of nights, so they can do some bushwalks, & a visit to the Jenolan Caves is heaps of fun. The Katoomba Lodge is old & funky, but comfortable for families. http://www.katoomba mountainlodge.com.au/ http://www.jenolanc aves.org.au/
Northern Beaches are terrific, with wave pools for safe swimming & lots of surf action. My kids love Narrabeen, where, when the tide is right, they can float down the gentle river draining into the ocean, jump out, run up the sand spit & do it again. And again. Almost any weekend there is some kind of carnival (competition) on one or other of the beaches: surf life boats, surfing, swimming. Good fun. Beaches have paid parking near the beach, but free parking is to be found on side streets. Buses will take you to any northern beach from CBD Sydney. Barrenjoey Lighthouse, at the northern end of the Northern Beaches spit is also good for families & there are some walking tracks into a hidden rain forest gully. You can take a little ferry from Church Point or Palm Beach into the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park; there are a couple of wonderful beaches at the ferry's terminus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Narrabeen
http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Barrenjoey, _New_South_ Wales
These suggestions are all from experiences my grandkids enjoyed & still talk about. I think driving in CBD Sydney is a nightmare & parking even worse, but that's my perspective. I take bus/ferry/train whenever possible. Exceptions would be days out, i.e., Blue Mountains or Hunter Valley. On Sundays there have been family days on Sydney transport, with bus/train/ferry unlimited rides available for $2.50 AUD each, a rare bargain. I don't know when that special offer may expire, but it's worth checking on.
Gail, second sunny day in a row in Eugene OR USA
