Gotta Be Doing Something: Sydney or New York

After 3 flights and 17 hours of flight time (over 30 hours of traveling) we arrived in Sydney. Our flight from LA to New Zealand was 12 hours and then we hopped onto yet another plane to Sydney. We arrived on Monday morning after leaving Utah Saturday night.
We had a great hotel location. We were only 2 blocks from Darling Harbor and within walking distance of almost everything we did. Luckily our hotel room was ready so we were able to check in early. We cleaned up from our flight then hit Sydney for 6 days of exploring.
Sydney is awesome. There is something very familiar about the city. It feels like a smash up between New York and San Francisco. It is a big city like NY, but is more open like San Francisco. We ate breakfast at cafes, bought snacks from corner convenience stores, saw millions of Chinese people and besides a few minor accent issues (and the Chinese people of course) we could understand everything being said. I didn't even feel like I was in a foreign country.
Our first day we spent exploring Darling Harbor. It was so beautiful. I could have sat in a cafe drinking my hot chocolate, eating banana bread all day and simply loved every minute of it.
BUT we didn't do that. We went off exploring the city.
In no particular order, we watched Harry Potter 3D on the largest IMAX screen in the world (don't be fooled by the 3D, it only had 10 minutes of 3Dness...lame), shopped at Paddy's Market (basically just like Canal Street in NY), ate sushi from a conveyor belt (it was sanitary), buffet at Sydney Tower (the floor moves be careful), walked around a tree forwards 3 times then backwards 3 times (it was Sydney's famous wishing tree and I really wanted my wish to come true so don't knock it), discovered the most gigantic bats ever were just hanging around in the Royal Botanic Gardens (seriously huge and scary, but they didn't hurt us...luckily), explored a submarine and destroyer, learned all about swimming suits or lack there off (Swimming Suit Fashion exhibit at the Maritime Museum), put our feet in the ocean, pet a koala (yeah that is right I got up close and they are so cute promise), took pictures inside St Mary's Cathedral (it wasn't allowed, but I didn't know that until we left...oops) and rocked out to Ben Folds (yeah I know your jealous).