Where to stay in Sydney

The harbour end of the city centre: Circular Quay with the Opera House on one side and the bridge on the other, The Rocks and Millers Point behind it — the oldest streets in the country, sandstone and pubs — and Barangaroo's new towers west of them. Every train line, every ferry and the light rail meet here, the Botanic Gardens run along the water, and the hotel stock is the largest in the city. What you give up is a neighbourhood: this is an office district with a harbour attached, quiet in the way office districts are quiet at the weekend, and expensive in the way harbour views are expensive.

Terraces on hills immediately south-east of the centre, and the reason people who live in Sydney raise an eyebrow when a visitor books the CBD. Crown and Bourke Street for eating, Oxford Street behind it, small hotels in converted pubs and warehouses, and a twenty-minute walk into town that is itself pleasant. It is a neighbourhood rather than a destination, which is the whole recommendation.

The finger of land east of the Botanic Gardens, dropping from Potts Point's art-deco blocks down to the naval wharf at Woolloomooloo. Small hotels, a dense run of restaurants on Macleay Street, the harbour at the bottom of the hill and the centre fifteen minutes on foot. It is the compromise this city is short of: a neighbourhood you can walk out of into the middle of town.

The beach, the pool at the southern end, and the cliff walk to Bronte and Coogee. A grid of low buildings behind the sand, cafés that open early, and a crowd that is half local and half not. There is no train: the bus from the centre takes half an hour and longer in summer, which is the trade the whole area turns on.

The other ocean beach, on the northern side, and the only area on this list you reach by boat: the ferry from Circular Quay takes about half an hour across the harbour and is the best thirty minutes in the city. A corso between the harbour beach and the ocean one, a surf town's rhythm, and an evening that belongs to the people who live there.

King Street, two kilometres of bookshops, bars, Thai restaurants and op shops in the inner west, with terraces behind it and a train station in the middle. The cheapest area on this list and the least like the postcard — no harbour, no beach, and the most ordinary Sydney life a visitor is likely to see. Glebe, next door, is not part of it: the two do not touch, and Camperdown and Forest Lodge sit between them.