Blue Mountains

This morning we had to get up early to get a two hour train out to the blue mountains. I slept through my alarm as I had earplugs in in an attempt to drown out the snoring and the blaring music outside. Thankfully Lauren didn't sleep through hers and prodded me awake. We got up and dressed and headed out. We got a train from Kings Cross to central and then had about 30 mins to spare so had some breakfast. We were waiting at the platform when I noticed that the next train was in 13 minutes when our train was supposed to be in 10, and Kaatomba, the stop we needed, wasn't listed. Turns out the T1 train we needed wasn't the T1 train we were at the platform for, despite it going in the same direction. We had to find a different platform but managed to do so fairly easily without needing to rush. The train was a double decker train with reversible seat backs so you could change the direction of the seat.

After two hours we got to Katoomba and bought our tickets for the hop on hop off blue mountains explorer bus which we probably would not have been able to survive the day without.

We got off first at Katoomba falls, which was a fairly small waterfall but beautiful none the less. We walked down many many stairs, stopping several times to take photos. We stopped at a mid-section type area of the waterfall and took photos. We climbed up to take some photos and I ended up with one of my feet in a pool of water. It was very soggy but dried very fast in the heat. I faired better than Lauren however who slipped over and landed in a pool of muddy water,  grazing her leg and banging her elbow. The photo of her on top of the waterfall is better than mine, and I put that down to my amazing photograpy skills. I don't have that on my phone to show though, so you'll just have to make do with mine.

We continued on for what felt like 10 miles to the bottom of the scenic railway which is a scarily steep railway from the bottom of the valley to the top of the mountain. It's a very quick ride but I had to hold on to stop myself falling out my seat.

At this point we were very tired and sweaty. We didn't really want to do much more walking after walking for about 2 and a half hours (not sure exactly how long) in the heat. We went across the skyline which is basically a cable car suspended in the air with a little glass floor, admired the view and got it back again.  Then we hopped on the bus to Echo Point and the three Sisters. 

The three sisters is the name of three large rock formations that have naturally appeared over time. We looked at them from the viewpoints then walked towards Honeymoon bridge which was bridge onto the first sister. We had to go down some incredible steep stairs to reach the bridge. It was horrendous. Going back up was even worse. We almost died from exertion. And annoyingly, it really wasn't worth it. The bridge was about a metre long and ended up at a rock wall.

We headed back to the bustop, getting our first ice cream of the trip on the way, and got the bus back to the station to get the train home.

Personally I thought the blue mountains were stunning. The views were amazing. The walking not so much but the exercise probably did us good. Definitely would recommend a visit! The pictures don't really do it justice! If you look carefully at one of the photos you can see the skyline cable car in the middle.

Once we were back at the hostel, we dumped our stuff and headed out for food at a pub next to the hostel that had steaks for $12. They were actually pretty decent. Mine was almost still alive, despite me asking for it to be medium. Lauren asked for medium well and it wasn't anywhere near. We both ate them anyway, much to the amazement of our parents I'm sure.

After dinner we came back to the hostel, showered and just relaxed.