Blue Mountains Day

The day started out lazy enough with both of us lounging at the Fusion cafe near Castle Tower (Ling's favourite mall in Sydney, a 15-minute walk from Castle Tang). For breakfast, we had raisin toasts, two lattes and chicken and mushroom filo (we call these Aussie curry puffs minus the curry, but we brought chilli packets to accompany filo, thanks to mum's good thinking. She had packed us handy chilli packs for the trip). As I poured over the Aussie papers, Ling was diligently studying. She's taking up a specialised diploma program in teaching. It was a good morning - even for her - as she loves studying. (Aside: under hobbies section as a child, Ling would fill in 'studying' which often makes me wonder if she used to have friends).

After breakfast, we decided to optimise the use of the rented car we'd gotten two days earlier and drove about an hour to Blue Mountains. We didn't go all the way up but stopped midway at Wentworth Waterfalls. We could have gone further up to see the Three Sisters but figured we'll save that adventure for our next visit. Secretly I think we both wanted to rush home to spend time with the kids.

The following pictures don't do justice to the breathtaking views of Blue Mountains. I told Ling it's almost impossible to get a picture that depicts what it was actually like for us: no photo can capture the beauty of what we experienced. But for a taste, this is us at Wentworth Waterfalls.





We tracked down this way to get an excellent view of the waterfalls.





It was a twenty-minute walk down (which also means a twenty-minute walk up later) to get this view.



Then feeling like we should reward ourselves for the walk-up after (during which there was very little conversation: we were trying to catch our breaths), we headed to a lovely cafe called the Conservatory Hut for tea.



We had a good view of the mountains from the cafe.



And loved how our latte looked.



Then recharged on caffeine, we drove to a nearby town that was very quaint and charming. We were happy to find a bookstore selling old books. Ling found a collector's copy of Little Women (that was at least 40 years old) and got it for a steal. She also bought me a book that she'd discovered through scrutinising the shelves. That, for us nerds, surely sealed our evening.