Blue Mountains

This is the view we had during breakfast from our hotel resataurant:

It put everyone in a good mood.

After breakfast we were off to explore the Blue Mountains, as much as we could do so with young children.  We headed to Scenic World, an ultra-tourist trap where we buy the whole package – Railway down to explore the ancient fern forest, cable car up, and cable car across the canyon, and add on some gift store purchases.  The only thing we managed to avoid was the rotating sky café… Just what we were after, pure, pristine, untouched nature…

The train ride is on an old coal mining track and heads down almost vertically to the bottom of the canyon. 

Those three protrusions in the rocks on the left are called The Three Sisters.  The legend goes something about three sisters, blah blah blah, I don't know, I wasn't paying attention.  But I took lots of pictures of them.

 Why we're here!

The cable car had a glass bottomed floor, allowing you to see precisely how far you would plunge if the cable snapped. 

The Only Child??  (not sure what they called this)

All in all, given our circumstances, without a lot of time here and with two young kids along, nature lite from a drive-thru window suited us just fine. 

 Afterward back in Katoomba I grabbed a warm, fresh meat pie, popular in Australia, at Hominy Bakery (braised beef, yum!!).  You eat it out of a waxed paper bag like a pita sandwich.  Then we sit down at Fresh next door for the rest of our meal.  Delightful.

 On our way home we stop at Lovett’s Leap lookout in Black Heath about 10 minutes from Katoomba.  My former-mountain-climber husband thinks it’s a yawn, as does Graham (who literally sleeps through the entire stop in the car seat) and Julia (who is more interested in drawing pictures in the sand with a stick), but I find it quite spectacular!  Better than all the Scenic World hoopla being out there on our own.

Photo by Julia. 

I call it a successful trip if this is your back seat on the way home...