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Over the weekend, we decided to take our first overnight excursion outside of Sydney.  We headed West on a 2 hour train ride outside of the city to the Blue Mountains.  It's a scenic area close to the city, and believe it or not we did experience seeing a bit of "blue" when looking at hills in the distance.  Keep in mind that "mountains" are a bit of a relative term for those of you from the west coast, the highest point in the range being a little over 3000 feet.

We arrived Sunday night and checked in at the "oldest guesthouse in the blue mountains".  I'm sure our moms would have appreciated this place as there were tons of original knick knacks and decorations.  The town we stayed in is called Katoomba and is home to Yulefest next month.  Since Christmas falls in the middle of summer here, the Yulefest festival essentially turns into Christmas in July.  Santa makes a visit, and there are plenty of fires, christmas roasts, and holiday drinks. 

On Monday we put on our wet weather hiking gear and started on our bushwalk (translation=hike).  The area we were in is home to a temperate rainforest.  Lucky for us the rain held off, but we spent most of the day in misty, foggy weather that was quite a bit cooler than Sydney.  We started out at the main attraction of the area, which is called the Three Sisters, a series of rock formations that jut out from the valley floor.  We headed down to the valley floor behind the 3 sisters on the "Giant Stairway".  The Giant Stairway was no joke, it's about as far from ADA compliant as you can get.  Over 1000 vertical feet and 800 stairs with many parts steeper than the cables on Half Dome in Yosemite.  Once we made it to the bottom it was amazing to see how lush and tropical the valley was.  A series of waterfalls led us to the boardwalks of "Scenic World", the ultimate Scenic tourist trap.  Despite it's shortcomings, it was home to our way out of the valley, and one of the highlights of the trip.  A ride up the scenic railway, which happens to be the steepest railway in the world.  At a 52 degree slope it's steeper than most expert ski runs, combine that with no seatbelts and it's a fun ride to the top, I highly recommend it.

For friends or others that plan to visit, if you're up for a few miles of hiking/walking, skip the $35/person explorer bus.  For $2 each way, you can catch the trolley to echo point or scenic world.  Take the $10 one way trip up from the valley floor and try out the giant staircase.