Blue Mountains!

July 30th
I finally got to sleep in a little today, even though I still got up a couple hrs before my alarm, which happens almost every morning for some reason. Anyways, today is the day we headed off to the Blue Mountains! We first stopped in this cute little town called Leura that had cute little shops that reminded me a lot of Lexington. We wandered around for a little bit and one of our stops included a little candy shop, which happened to sell some A&W root beer (unfortunately no Vernors). The previous day at the Fiddler we were talking about root beer and Vernors and whether or not they had anything like it here that would compare to it. So, Jillian decided to buy herself a can to see what exactly root beer was. Needless to say, you could tell by the look on her face that she had never had anything like it before, and was not a fan. I remember Helena and Vivian trying it for the first time in the states, and though Vivian loved it, Helena for some reason thought that it tasted like toothpaste haha. Jillian just thought that it tasted like medicine; neither of their comparisons I can relate to. After Jill took a few sips hoping to acquire a taste, she decided to give up and hand off the rest to Katie and I.

After eating lunch in Leura, it was time to make our way to the Three Sisters. The three sisters are three rock formations that stand on the Blue mountains and are part of an Aboriginal legend. The legend says that they caused a battle after trying to marry into a different tribe, they were turned to stone for protection but the elder that did this was killed in battle so they remained this way. Once we saw them from a distance it was time for an up close and personal visit to the three ladies to get some more pictures. As we were waiting to make our way down the side of the mountain (via built in stairs) there were people climbing up them that sounded like they had just run a marathon, and I quickly realized why. I'm not sure how far down they had climbed up from but the stairs were quite steep and uneven!


We finally made it to more of a path that went along the side of the mountains, and this part of the hike took about 1.5hrs or so. Though a lot of it was wooded area, there were lots of points that allowed you to peek through the trees and see more of the mountains. This whole thing was peaceful and very enjoyable to walk through. At one point we heard russling in some leaves and turned to look and find a fat mouse making its way up the hill. I took this opportunity to grab Katie's shoulders and she jumped and screamed so loud I don't think we had to worry about coming across anymore wild life haha. I'm not sure what scared her more though, me or the scenic railway that had to take us back up the mountain. This railway is apparently the steepest in the world and Katie was all sorts of freaking out; Jillian and I found this quite humorous! When we finally got off, the guy that was there to greet us told Katie that they sold drinks upstairs, and that she should celebrate her survival haha.


Once we got back outside, there to meet us were some um, very interesting aboriginal statues there to greet us. We took it upon ourselves to have a photo shoot with them !

The plan from here was to take the last path back across the mountains back to where we started. However, these plans were a bit dampered after we ran across some yellow caution tape and a sign that said that there had been some dibre that had fallen and blocked our path. Therefore we opted to take the road back rather than paying for a bus. We were all quite exhausted when we got back home and I managed to sneak in a bit of a nap before dinner. They call this a "Nana Nap" rather than a "Cat Nap"; I think that I will be using this terminology from this point forward haha. For dinner, we grilled up some of the steaks that Jillian won in her meat tray, and had some amazing cheesy potatos and a salad.

The day wasn't over yet tho! Now it was time to meet up with some of Jillian's friends (Marc, Adam, and Mitch) in Parramatta at a place named PJ's Irish Pub. When we were on our way in they bouncer noticed our ID's were clearly not Australian and said that the "special visitors" could go through a different door and get in free, rather that paying the $10 cover!! Gotta love being the foreign one!lol. Jillian's friends were I believe all from her Uni. and were teachers themselves. They were talking to us about how much they were in debt and were surprised to find that we paid like five times as much for college than we did and decided that they need not complain haha. They then tried to convince that we should just move here and make more money, esp since our dollar is really not helping me out at all here.

Eventually it was time to hit the dance floor, which is always a good time. At least until someone gets kicked out haha. While we were on the dance floor, there was a guy that decided that it was a good idea to turn the speaker into a corner because it was in his ear. Wellll...this made the sound even worse so I reached behind Marc to turn it back around and he helped me a little bit. After we got it turned around a bouncer came over and told Marc not to touch anything, and after denying that he had and that it wasnt his fault the bouncer decided to kick him out. Apparently it was time to go lol. We then decided to make our way back to Marc's house for a little while rather than heading home.

Before we left to go out for the night Jillian had told us that she thought Marc was getting the wrong idea and that he was trying to make moves on her. Well, Katie and I got to wittness this first hand and it was sooo clear that Jill was not interested but he was clearly not getting the hint. Man I hate when guy do that!! lol but I must admit it was a bit entertaining to watch when its not you! Eventually Jill had had enough and it was time to go home and passss outttt!!