Local Area Guides

Bondi in summer is a different experience to any other time of year. Here’s what’s worth doing, and what to skip when it’s packed.

From the Bondi to Coogee to lesser-known clifftop routes, here are the best coastal walks in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs with local detail.

Most weekend guides to Bondi read like someone tried to fit in everything the suburb offers over two days. You don’t need that. What you need is a plan that doesn’t leave you standing around at 1pm on a Saturday wondering where to eat because everywhere worth going needed a booking you didn’t make three weeks ago.Two days is genuinely enough time to get a proper feel for the place. Pace it across two mornings and two afternoons and it works. Try to cram it into one big day and you’ll spend the next one recovering instead of enjoying it.

Six kilometres in, you’re hungry, and the last thing you want is a wait for a table or a menu that needs thinking about. This is the companion to our guide to coastal walks in the Eastern Suburbs, less about the route, more about what to do with yourself once you’ve finished. The honest problem with post-walk eating is timing. Nobody finishes a coastal walk at a predictable hour, you stop for photos, someone wants a swim, the group splits up for a bit, so booking a table in advance for a specific time rarely works out. Walk-in dining isn’t

Local Area Guides Most people visiting Bondi for a day end up doing the same three things in the wrong order – beach, then confused wander for lunch, then a coffee they didn’t need because they’d already had one earlier. Locals run the day differently, mostly because we’re not trying to fit everything in, we’re just doing the things that are actually good at the time they’re actually good. If you want to walk before breakfast, pick one of the best walks in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, most start within ten minutes of the sand. None of this requires booking ahead