Advertisement
Published: February 8th 2007
Edit Blog Post
the blue mountains
the mountains are called the blue mountains because of teh blue haze given off by the gum trees in the valley. Ok so i know that this should really be included as part of our stay in sydney but i get to put more photos on this way. The area is absolutly stunning and so chilled/laid back would have liked to have stayed longer.
Any way we caught the train from sydney central station to Katoomba in the blue mountains. The train ride was pretty good i got to ride on the top deck of a double decker train, which i don't think i've ever done before. we arrived in the early afternoon and went in search of our hostel, which we found just down the road from the station. it was a huge building that resembled a hospital from the outside, inside it looked even more like a hospital, lino floors white walls and ceilings, with a huge lounge area which looked a little like a waiting room/cafeteria, also most of teh door ways were extra wide as if to have to accomodate a moveable hospital bed.
It was quiet when we arrived but thats normal for a hostel everybodys out doing site seeing, but as the day turned to night it became apparent that this huge hostel that could
The 29 of doom
This bus origionaly used to work out of the wood green bus garage, small world eh! easily hold a couple of hundred backpackers had only around a dozen people staying there including the "odd" members of staff. The hostel started reminding me of The shinning were the staff were slowly going mad because they were looking after this massive hostel with no one in it. It didn't help having these long straight white corridors everywhere and teh fact that you could hear peoples voices echoing around the place but never actually find anyone.
Anyway enough about the Bates hostel (i know wrong film). after dumping our stuff in our room we set out exploring Katoomba and bought our ticket on the mountain explorer bus, you can probably guess my excitment at being told that i'd be able to ride around in a real to goodness london red bus. i come all the way around the world to sight see in a bus that originally came from the Wood Green depot about a mile away from where i used to live in Haringay.
The first day we pretty much did a circuit of where we could hop on and off of the bus, stopping at a chocolate shop (El's request shockingly) where i found out that
The chilli bomb
Proof that chilli and chocolate do go together, it was delicious. chilli and chocolate really do go together by trying one of the shops chilli bomb chocolates. from here we hopped back on a bus and went around to a place called Georges falls, the view out over the mountains was magnificent all the blue haze from the morning was gone and you could see for mile's. while we were doing this though we missed the last bus back to Katoomba and had to walk to a nice little town called Leura to catch the train the one stop back. That night we spent in the hostel just wondering where everybody was and if this was a hospital before is the funeral palour next door where the morgue used to be. nice stuff to be going to sleep thinking about.
The next day was a busy one going to the mountain rides and trying to get around as much as we could. we started off in a mountain theme park type thing going up and down teh mountains in cable cars, small trains and a coal cart ( not quite like indiana jones tho) taking as many photos as we could along the way. the walk at the bottom of
the mountains between the rides was really nice all covered by dense forest and some of the bigest trees i've ever seen in my life. The next stop on our day trip was to see the three sisters, nice to look at but a bit to steep to try and climb down so me and El just stood at the top and looked, they were quite spectacular but having seen the twelve apostles a couple of weeks earlier, they just didn't look as good.
After the three sisters at Els request again we went back to the chocolate shop for some more chocolate and a drink, i had carrot cake, was pretty awsome, then went for the long walk back to the hostel, we had once again missed the last bus D'oh
The last morning was a bit of a weird one trying to check out but their wasn't anyone around to give us back or deposit, eventually found some one, then just as we were leaving a coach load of people turned up to check into the hostel. If their had been this many people here when we had checked in maybe the stay wouldn't have been so
eerie. Anyway nothing supernatural happened and we "lived to tell the tale" (i'm never gonna get bored of taking the piss). The train ride back to sydney was pretty uneventful just listened to some music and watched the world whizz by.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.101s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 15; qc: 61; dbt: 0.0559s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb