Katoomba!

We spent the day in a town in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney called Katoomba. From the maps and basic reading about it, you'd imagine it's a quaint little town with art galleries, cafes, bakeries, tourist traps, probably a pub or two (this is Australia...), and easy access to some great hiking trails - including the "three sisters" rocks and the infamous cable car ride. Everything would look like cottages and have white picket fences and cobblestone roads... OK now erase that image and try this one on for size: You get off at the train/bus station and look at a bunch of 'tour the blue mountains' tourist traps, across the street there's a pub, a newsstand, and a bunch of mediocre looking restaurants. You realize that the only way to appropriately travel around this town is by trolley, which picks up at each of its 24 stops once each hour. The sun will be down by 5pm and its gonna be a cold day. The hiking trails comprise about 6 of the trolley stops, and you have been convinced to check out 'scenic world,' which sounds like a trashy amusement park, but is the home of the steepest railway in the world and is supposedly pretty cool. Ok got it? Here goes.

The train we were supposed to take this morning wasn't running, so after a fun bus ride, we finally made it to Katoomba, to find the scene described above. While there may have been 11 of us along for the ride - most with pretty strong opinions about the 'best way' to do everything - we got started on a hike around the "Three Sisters." They are a rock formation within the Blue Mountains that is one of the most popular tourist sites in the area. The hike included a trip down the steepest stairway I have ever seen - it was a little overwhelming, but overall a really fun walk... after the stairway and a few more kilometers, we made it to the Katoomba Scenic Railway. It is the steepest railway in the world (at its steepest the incline is about 57 degrees) and was built to facilitate the coal mines in the valley. The mines have been closed for years, but the railway and cable car are pretty incredible. We grabbed some sandwiches and then made our way to the Katoomba Falls, we only had time for one other hike before the sun set and the trolley left us stranded on the mountain! Around sunset we made it back to the bus, the train, another bus, the grocery store and our apartment.


It's been a long day, but overall pretty fantastic!!!

Click here to check out the pictures!

I feel like every post ends with a promise for more, so as always, I won't disappoint :)

Cheers!
Rachel


PS ---- If you'd like a fancy shmansy Australia post card (complete with wombat postage stamp... well, at least the first few are, we'll see if they have other flavors of int'l stamps) send me/post your address!!