In ever-sunny, easygoing Sydney, don’t let the famous attractions circling the handsome harbor consume all your attention. Focus instead on the evolving neighborhoods where art spaces are cropping up beside train tracks, and innovative, chef-driven restaurants are opening at a rapid clip. If you’re searching for flash, look to Darling Harbour, where celebrity chefs like David Chang and Luke Nguyen have opened outposts in the Star, a ritzy casino and entertainment complex that reopened in 2011 after a renovation costing around $800 million. For more discreet indulgences, seek out the diminutive drinking dens that now pepper the city, the result of a change in local liquor licensing laws that finally made business viable for small bars. Then when it’s time to dry out, the natural beauty of Australia’s most populous city will be waiting along the sandy beaches that lie just minutes from downtown. And don’t worry, you’re bound to pass a certain opera house along the way.

FRIDAY

1. Modern Masters | 3 p.m.

Sydney is the pre-eminent place for art on the continent, in part because of the city’s soaring multistory arts spaces. First hop over to the White Rabbit Gallery (free), which focuses exclusively on contemporary Chinese art. Rotating exhibitions draw from the gallery’s vast collection, which includes stunning pieces like a life-size wire motorbike by Shi Jindian, a pile of Ai Weiwei’s sunflower seeds, and Tu Wei-Cheng’s reproduction of a chocolate shop stocked with tank- and bomb-shaped confections. Then head uptown to the Rocks precinct where the renovated Museum of Contemporary Art reopened in 2012 with a new five-story wing. Most interesting are the temporary exhibitions, like last year’s captivating Anish Kapoor retrospective and, now, a thought-provoking collection from Yoko Ono.