Big day today with a trip to the Blue Mountains with Oztrails.
We got picked up outside our hotel at around 8.30 and then drove out west past Paramatta and had a bit of morning tea, consisting of dried mixed nuts and some dry bikkies and some soft drinks while the guide collected money from those who hadn’t yet paid for the tour. Since we’d paid online when we booked, it was a bit boring for us, but we managed.
First stop in the Blue Mountains was at Flat Rock lookout. I’d never been here before and it’s a bit of four wheel driving to get there, but the views were spectacular! It was pretty cold up here and we were glad we’d worn our warmest clothes. The tour guide said that the Blue Mountains is what the Grand Canyon would look like if it had trees. Don’t know if I agree with that. But here’s some pretty pictures:
Next stop was above Katoomba Falls. I had expected to stop at the Three Sisters, but that didn’t happen at all. I suppose it’s too ordinary. Everyone’s seen those pictures! Anyway, we got the cable car from above the falls across to Scenic World at the other end of the canyon. From here we had fantastic views of Katoomba Falls and also the Three Sisters – depending on where you were standing – the car was very full! The canyon floor was covered in gorgeous fern trees but the pictures I took weren’t focused enough for my liking. Very sad. I managed to get a few nice pictures of the falls though:
Scenic World was at the end of the ride and they had a great viewing platform where you got in another cable car for the ride down to the bottom of the canyon. I got some nice photos of the Three Sisters, as well as the 2 sisters with a backdrop of the Three Sisters from there:
We took the ride down in order to go for a walk along the boardwalk there. I got one or two nice shots from the cable car:
We had a choice of 10 minute, 30 minute or one and a half hour walks. Unfortunately (fortunately for Ela with her sore feet) we only had time to do the 30 minute one. Which actually took a bit longer than that. Stopping for photos may have had something to do with that… There were some open air museum displays along the boardwalk of mining in the area back in the late 1800s. The photo of the stove that you can see was an amazing shot taken by my camera in what, to me, was complete darkness – I couldn’t see anything!
At the end of the walk, we got on the cog railway back to the top. This was very much like a roller coaster! I got to sit in the front but the photos I managed to take were not so good. I’ll have to remember next time I try to photograph through a fence or bars or something to turn off auto-focus!
The next stop on our tour was lunch at Leura. There’s lots of little restaurants and cafes there, with the expected inflated prices. We wandered around a bit on the lookout for something reasonable that appealed to us. We found it in a little cafe The Wayzgoose Cafe that appears to be frequented by the locals – always a good sign. We chose their lamb stack house specialty and it was, according to Ela, the best meal of the whole trip! It was very good and not excessively expensive either. The service was friendly and, though it was packed with people, quite efficient. I wish I’d taken a picture now!
Next stop on the tour was the Jamison Lookout and a walk down to the Wentworth Falls. I’d never been down to the falls either, so that was another new thing for me. It was quite worthwhile – there’s some pretty falls down there:
I had to take some more photos from the top – Jamisons Lookout – when we came back up, because the sun had just come out and it completely changed the view!
After our little trek of about an hour and a half, it was off to the see the aboriginal rock carving near the entrance to the Blue Mountains. I’d never seen this either, but Steve (our guide) explained its significance to us.
Then it was back on the bus for the trip back towards Sydney. We were dropped off near the Olympic Park at the Paramatta river jetty. The Park is usually part of the tour, but the Royal Easter Show was on and we couldn’t get onto the site. We got the Captain Cook cruise from there back to the city. I played with sunset shots a little:
We got off at the Darling Harbour jetty to have dinner at the Chinta Ria restaurant recommended to us by Libby. It’s one of the nicest Asian Restaurant buildings I’ve seen in Australia, and the ambience inside was really great. The food was disappointing though – especially since it was the most expensive meal we’d had the whole trip. I guess I should’ve had the meal Libby had recommended!
Ela was keen to go for a walk through China Town, so we headed that way, even though it was drizzling. I took some photos around Darling Harbour along the way, of course:
China Town itself was pretty dead at this time of night, and being a week-night, too, probably didn’t help:
Then it was back to the hotel for a final spa.
