Visit one of the Harbour City’s east-facing beaches on a cloudless weekday morning, and you’ll quickly understand why Sydneysiders are so enchanted by the sunrise. It’s hard to have a bad day when you spent the first few moments of it watching the sun burst out of the ocean from the salty embrace of Bronte Baths, or with a coffee from a beachfront café. And while we already had all the anecdotal evidence we needed to stake Sydney’s claim as a sunrise hotspot, a new report has just verified our position – with the Emerald City ranking as the fourth best sunrise-watching spot in the world.
To identify the world’s top sunrise watching spots, influencer marketing platform Heepsy analysed data and ranked the locations from around the world where sunrises are the most-frequently Instagrammed. The report analysed sunrise-related Instagram hashtags per city, as well as average sunshine hours, air quality, tourism numbers and the number (and standard) of popular sunrise spots. Frankly, we can’t work out how we didn’t come first.
According to the data, 61,800 sunrise hashtags have been shared to Instagram from Sydney – making it the fourth most popular sunrise spot in the world.
With 685,000 sunrise hashtags across Instagram when the report was released, New York City ranked as the most desirable daybreak destination in the world, with Dubai ranking in second place with 254,000 sunrise hashtags. Although a lot of our biggest cities face east, Sydney was the only Aussie city to crack the top ten.
The best sunrise-watching cities in the world are:
1. New York City
2. Dubai
3. Seoul
4. Sydney
5. Paris
6. Berlin
7. San Francisco
8. Madrid
9. Maui
10. Barcelona
Want to make the most of the break of day? Here’s our round-up of 66 things to do in Sydney before 9am.
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