7-Day Sydney Vacation for Seniors: Opera to Blue Mountains

Zicasso’s travel specialist is marvelous. From our introductory FaceTime chat, I knew he was the right person to plan our Australian adventure. I shared a general timeline and a few preferences—personalized travel, small-group tours, and a focus on scenery, food, and local experiences. I even casually mentioned that, since I pack light, laundry options every 7 to 10 days would be a bonus.

Wow—did the travel specialist deliver.

Private city tours in Sydney, Adelaide, and Melbourne. A Blue Mountains excursion with a local resident. Wine tastings, a foodie walking tour in Melbourne, and fabulous centrally located hotels that made exploring on foot effortless. The Ghan train journey was an unforgettable highlight.

And yes—lodgings with on-site laundry right on cue around day 10 and day 20. Not bad for a “casual” request!

This trip was truly amazing and the travel specialist was an absolute pleasure to work with. Always responsive, thoughtful, and attentive, he made what could have been complex planning feel completely effortless—and perfectly tailored to my travel style.

Rave reviews all around.

Everything went great with our trip. A couple of small, unforeseen hiccups were well managed by Zicasso's travel agency. We had a flight cancelled due to mechanical issues that would have set us back by a day. The agency was able to reroute us via a different airline so our trip itinerary could stay intact. Also, there was an issue with our Sydney Opera House tour (due to a Sydney Opera House issue) and they were able to send us the necessary information very quickly so we could go on the tour.

Our trip included three couples from Massachusetts. We worked with Zicasso's travel agency to customize a trip to Australia. In general, the trip was excellent. Most of the travel logistics were perfect. All transfers were on time. All of the guides were on time, passionate about Australia, and were very good to excellent. All the hotels were also very good to excellent. The travel app was very helpful for keeping us updated on trip logistics. Most logistics worked out well. Most of the tours arranged were excellent. The fly nets the agency provided were a godsend in Uluru. Seeing Australia's unique wildlife, snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef, going to a footy game, walking around cities, meeting indigenous guides, and simply being in Australia is an experience we will never forget. The Great Ocean Road excursion in Melbourne was beautiful, but eight hours in a tour bus was very long. The geographic size of Australia is something visitors have to deal with.

I would have rated the trip five stars except for the following minor issues. We arranged travel between the US and Australia ourselves (not using the agency), which, in hindsight, was a mistake. Therefore, most of the travel headaches we experienced are not included in this review. The one miss they should have caught was informing us that a New Zealand ETA is needed for transiting through Auckland, New Zealand (even though we did not clear New Zealand customs). We were able to apply and get the ETA at the Houston airport just before boarding the plane, but the stress could easily have been avoided had we realized we needed this document before the trip began.

The instructions for where to meet for the backstage tour of the Sydney Opera House were a little off. We were told to meet the tour at 6.45am, downstairs by the information booth. This turned out to be the meeting place for the outside tour. By 6.55am, fighting jetlag and the early hour, we figured the meeting place for the backstage tour was upstairs and, luckily, we made it in time for our 7am tour, which was excellent.

The selection of wineries we visited in Adelaide wasn't ideal. Several did not ship their products to the US, which meant, for practical reasons, we could only purchase a bottle or two. Ideally, we should only visit wineries that ship wine to the States.

Communicating with the agency during the trip was more challenging than we expected. For some reason, we didn't always get their emails or text messages. It wasn't clear how often they checked up on us during our journey. Last year, we arranged a similar trip to Greece and the company we worked with provided us with a mobile phone for the duration of the trip to facilitate communications. They regularly called us to see how the trip was going. In our opinion, this capability and handholding would improve the service this agency provides.

Thanks to the amazing, perfectly planned Australia and New Zealand vacation itinerary provided by Zicasso's travel agency, and specifically the travel agent and her wonderful colleagues, this was the perfect vacation. We were well taken care of and flights were planned within the countries, with someone always greeting us at the next stop to move us through to our next adventure.  

We were always busy and saw the most wonderful things... a sunset dinner cruise on Sydney harbor, the march of the penguins at Phillip Island (she arranged for us to have a front-row seat!), snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef, and touring the rainforest with an Aboriginal guide was very interesting! She arranged for many tours and activities, like a jet boat ride up the Dart River, a helicopter ride onto a glacier, and a TranzAlpine train ride in New Zealand. We also had a first-time-ever encounter with a pod of orca while on a boat tour in New Zealand. The whole trip was an unforgettable experience!

We wished we had taken the travel agent's advice and stayed longer. There was so much to see. We packed a lot into our four short weeks thanks to them. We highly recommend using them to plan your Australia and New Zealand itinerary.

Zicasso's tour planner did a superb job for us. She collaborated with us on working out our itinerary and had useful information on how to combine our desired destinations efficiently.

While we were in Australia, she was available via the company's app, including helping us on a late evening when our flight from Sydney to Hobart was canceled because of a cyclone and we needed a short-notice hotel in Sydney.

The travel specialist at Zicasso's tour company gave us a selection of different types of tours for Sydney, Melbourne, and Hobart. Each tour had different levels of activities for us to select from, allowing us to create an itinerary based on our interests.

We had a couple of minor hiccups that were handled with a phone call. We would highly recommend this travel company.