Blue Mountains
Our plan was to visit the Blue Mountains today. Our local friends and online travel guides both recommended a visit. It is a bit of an earlier start as it’s approximately two hours outside of Sydney. We trained to Strathfield where we met Physio and a few friends to drive the rest of the way.
Three Sisters
Our first stop was at the Three Sisters. This was one of the main “attractions” of the Blue Mountains and the moment we arrived we realized that it was heavily frequented by tours. There was a large number of tour buses in the parking lot and it was teaming with tourists (yes I know that I’m one as well!) We stayed long enough to take a few photos but didn’t have much of a desire to stay longer. If I was being completely honest, I’d say the landscape the three sisters is in is impressive and beautiful. However the sisters themselves I found slightly underwhelming. I’ve seen similar (and in my opinion, grander) formations before. Most notably from my trip to South Africa around the Three Rondavels.
Empress Falls
Undeterred we hopped back into Physio’s van and headed towards a hike he recommended. We hiked down the cliff side towards a small waterfall called Empress falls. The hike itself wasn’t too strenuous. There was a great deal of stairs and while going down was easy, coming back up was a bit more work! The falls themselves were pretty! It wasn’t one of those huge single drop falls, but one that had multiple levels forming several pools.All in all it was an enjoyable hike with a rewarding treat once we arrived at the falls. If you are from Vancouver or somewhere in the Pacific Northwest then you’ll have enjoyed similar scenery and hikes, but its not like natural beauty like this can get old!
Featherdale Wildlife Park
One of our must do items ever since we started planning to come down under was to get as close to a Koala as possible. We had researched Featherdale Wildlife Park as a place that had Koalas! It was between Sydney and the Blue mountains, so on our way home we asked Physio to drop us off. We only had a few hours to visit the entire preserve, but we made good use of the time! We had a chance to get pretty close to Wallaby’s, Kangaroos, emus and had an opportunity to get up close to a Koala!
I instantly fell in love with these guys! They were cute, cuddly and seemed so lethargic…. like me! A few of them were hanging on trees as if they had simply passed out against a branch! We learned that because of the toxic nature of the leaves that they eat, it takes all of their energy to digest it and thus why they seem to always be a little “drunken” or “off”
I really enjoy wildlife and this visit was no different! My hope is that I’ll have an opportunity to see more of it as we continue our travels!
Nomad
With Featherdale in our rear view mirror we took the train back into Sydney. As it had been a pretty full day we were hungry and started looking for a place to eat. We found one called Nomad that was highly rated on Trip advisor and we decided to grab dinner.
The food was spectacular and the rating was well deserved. We had the southern calamari, a kingfish ceviche and the wood roasted melanda park pork that was amazing!
Harry’s Cafe de Wheels
One of the things we really wanted to do in Australia was have a meat pie. While researching things to eat in Australia, It was difficult to find uniquely Australian dishes. Meat pies was one such dish and there was a highly rated one (on trip advisor) that was on our way home called “Harry’s“. We stopped there to have a pie (even though we were stuffed from dinner). In all honesty, it was exactly what I was expecting: a pie with meat inside! I can see how it would be an easy thing to stop by on your way to work and pick up a pie as a quick meal. But I can’t say I would go out of my way to get one. Don’t get me wrong, it was tasty, it just wasn’t knock your socks off delicious!
It was a super long day full of many activities and we were ready to head to bed. Tomorrow promised more Australian goodness and we were extremely excited for it!