Capella Sydney

George McRae, the government architect, meant his building for the Department of Public Instruction to close round a formal garden, and it never quite did: his northern half went up from 1912, John Reid and Son's southern one by 1930. The courtyard has a garden now, if not a formal one. Weeping figs shade the tables of Aperture, the bar there, beside a wall planted solid with native flora, and the robotic flowers of DRIFT's Meadow hang head-down, opening for whoever stands beneath them. Make Architects' conversion has left the Edwardian Baroque sandstone looking like a ministry with better upholstery: walnut and marble in the rooms, and on the sixth floor a spa in a former art gallery, its copper-lined lanterns kept, with a heated 20-metre lap pool lit through the ceiling.

Recommended for grown-ups who want Sydney on foot: the ferries at Circular Quay are five minutes' walk and the Opera House about ten. A hotel whose fruit forager makes the welcome drink from fermented wild rosella, wild honey and cider vinegar was always going to pickle things at dinner. Brasserie 1930, from the team behind Bentley Restaurant & Bar, cures, smokes and ferments them too. An extra bed is free for under-12s and babysitting can be arranged, but the building that once ran the state's schools keeps no kids' club. The Capella Suite has a fireplace and, from its bedroom, the Royal Botanic Garden next door: more garden than McRae ever planned for his quadrangle, and kept by the neighbours.