Blue Mountains!

While the rest of you stuffed your faces with Turkey and other traditional sides over your long weekend, we went to the Blue Mountains and filled our bellies with other kinds of food. The Blue Mountains are about an hour and a half to two hours away from Sydney. They are called the Blue Mountains because sometimes they will look blue due to the gum trees that line the mountains.

We stayed at the Lavendar Manor, which was indeed lavendar. You would be able to spot this house a mile away. It's much brighter in person than this photo gives it justice. It was made to house 12 people.


Since the house was half filled with Americans, we decided to show the non-Americans what a Thanksgiving apple should be decorated with. David was the artist to this piece of work.


We feasted on roast chicken and lamb, potatoes (regular and sweet), squash and apple pie.


A peak of the living space. There were plenty of couches to fit everyone comfortably. This is our post dinner lounging.


The next morning, we tried to take a scenic walk. Unfortunately, it's been overcast and raining the last couple of days. This was the view that we could see. Fog...


Here is our crew hiking to another viewing outlook. The hike was relatively difficult because of the water. Parts of the trail were very saturated and you had to be very careful of where you stepped. All of the Americans were wearing our "trainers" (aka sneakers) so if you accidentally stepped in a puddle, your shoe and sock was suddenly wet.


The crew trying to find something to look at. I'm not too sure what they see.


As the day went on and as we descended further down the mountain, the fog would lift occasionally for us to see glimpses of what we should be seeing. In between the fog, we could see some waterfalls.


By the end of our hike, you could even see across the valley to the other side of the mountains.


After a hearty lunch of gourmet sandwiches, a group decided to try a hike that was supposed to take 3-4 hours. When we got to the parking lot, it began pouring rain and half the group decided to no longer go. Luckily, David was stubborn enough to go and it turned out to be awesome. By the time we started descending the mountain, the rain had stopped. Here's a picture of Jo, Agathe and me heading down into the valley.


When we got to the bottom of the valley, it was very pretty. We were criss crossing a natural stream and found many waterfalls. In one of the places, we were forced to go behind the waterfall to continue our journey. There was even a short tunnel through the mountains at one point. Jo is taking in the environment.

We ended up finishing the hike in only 2 hours. We estimate that we didn't do about a half hour of hiking on the side of the road to get back to the car park area. Since the other half of the group didn't join us, they had taken the car and went into one of the towns. We started walking back to the house because the other group wasn't close enough to pick us up. The weather was startening to worsen and we were all exhausted, so Agathe and Jo convinced David and I to hitchhike our way back to the house. It was kind of silly because we were only a mile or two away. We finally picked up a car after I stuck my thumb out. Apparently I have a friendly face. =)

The next day, the sun had decided to come out. We went to Echo Point to see the Three Sisters, which are the three jagged points to our right.


You could go down a short path and touch the first sister.


After we took many stairs to the bottom of the mountain, we did a short walk and stumbled across some interesting waterfalls.


At one point, the group split into two and half the group headed back to the "Great Staircase" to walk back up to the top. The other half, which included the four of us who hiked yesterday, decided to go to the railway car and ride up to the top of the mountain. After we got to the top, we had to sprint back to the Echo Point to meet up the other group. Along the way, we stopped for a brief moment at Katoomba Falls for a photo op.


After our morning hike, we headed to a nice restaurant for lunch. Luckily, we had booked a table for lunch because within a half hour of sitting down, it was pouring outside. We all had the tasting menu, which was quite delicious, but took a very long time. Finally after our long lunch, which ended around 4:00 PM, we headed back to the city.

On our ferry ride back, the Australian Idol finale was getting ready outside the Opera House. They had an outdoor concert as well as an indoor one. Their finale is way better than the American Idol finale. It includes fireworks over Sydney Harbour and tons of live performances from other musicians. It was a 3 hour finale and we watched every minute of it!


Australian's interesting fact of the day: "Hotels". All around Sydney, you'll see signs for hotels, but over half of them will most likely not have rooms for you to stay in. Over here, a hotel means it's a place where you can drink. It's usually a bar, but sometimes it can also include a dance floor and be more like a club.