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so for those of you who didn't get the memo, last Tuesday was :userwombat:'s last day at his, well, previous job. He doesn't start at his new place until tomorrow, so in the way of these things I hacked some rec leave for last Thursday and Friday and we headed on up to the Blue Mountains for a holiday. For those not 'in the know' about these things, the Blue Mountains are about an hour's drive west of Sydney. The whole area is kind of a gentrified weekend retreat for middle-class Sydneyside professionals, comeplete with more boutique-antique clothing and furniature shops than you can poke a wrought-iron 19th century fire poker at. It's also got things like the Jenolan Caves, which were Australia's first official tourist attraction (and as such as on Touring Road 1). I've never been up the Blue Mountains, but damn I do love caves. And walking through rainforests, which the area also has (temperate ones; yes, there's such a thing as a sub-tropical rainforest).
Anyway, we headed down on Thursday morning and checked into our non-serviced apartment at Leura a little after 2 in the afternoon. It was [********] cold -- Leura is higher up than Canberra is, and some noob forgot to pack her coat -- so we went and hid in a little Italian cafe and had the most delicious soup in the whole world; no exageration. It was like carrot and ginger and celery and man was it great; that soup kept me going for the entire time we were down there. ******** all the other food (over-indulging on holiday; who woulda thunk it!). At four :userwombat: had booked me into an aroma-massage we apparently got free with the room, which was interesting. I've old ever had, like, theraputic massage before -- working-out-the-collagen kinda stuff -- so the aroma-massage was quite different, but still very enjoyable. Then we just kinda bummed around in the apartment for a while, rearranging the furniature so we could watch TV lying on the fold-out bed in the living room. Apparently the Discovery Channel plays American Chopper all day, but despite turning it on no less than four times, I still didn't manage to see an entire episode. Useless trivia.
Anyway, we had dinner at a nice Thai restraunt called (hilariously) Bow Thai (oh man, you're killing me, stop it). That's the good thing about these gentrified country resort towns; good ******** food. Very important, that. Afterwards, :userwombat: got the munchies and took off in Yareth to find a supermarket. He was gone for ages, and I was totally just about to call him -- I swear, it's just the laptop was warm and The Doctor and Romana were visiting the Leisure Hive -- when he came back with milk and cookies. Apparently he'd ended up having to go to Katoomba, which was at the end of a long, winding mountain road. We ate some cookies, and went to bed (well, I went to bed; :userwombat: stayed up to watch the football).
The next day we got back on the winding road and headed out to Scenic World, which is kind of the main valley rainforest walking park place. We went on the glass-floored cable car across the valley and saw the Three Sisters, then I dragged :userwombat: around the bush a bit, which was fun seeing as how the ground was covered in puddles and my pants are, like, really long. Humourous. Eventually we headed back to the cable car and back across the valley, only to get on another cable car, this one descending down. It's pretty damn steep, which prompted lots of nervous laughter and "Woah!"s from the various tour groups packed into the little thing. We got to the bottom without dying, and went on our ten minute 'awareness walk' through the valley floor. There were more tracks down there that I would've liked to ramble along, but I'm not very good at exploring with other people around. Plus there might have been, like, ticks and leeches or something. Ick! So instead we took what is apparently the world's steepest railway back up to the top of the valley and, yeah, it was pretty ******** steep. I thought the cable-car was bad enough coming down, but I'm glad we did it that way; I wouldn't've been able to deal with the railway going down! Going up was bad enough, watching the track appearing out behind us (the seats face down the hill no matter which way the train is going).
After Scenic World we went and had lunch in Katoomba, then prepared ourselves for the long drive back home. turning roughly two blocks away from the main street and, hey hold on, this looks mightly familiar... there's our apartment!
Yes, apparently Leura is a glorfied suburb of Katoomba. Apparently :userwombat: found the scenic route. The really scenic route. Hilarious.
Saturday saw me drag poor :userwombat: out to the caves, which are about another hour's drive beyond Katoomba (no, really this time). I love caves; I went and did some 'real' caving at Wee Jasper with the Cub Scouts when I was a kid, and it's something I really enjoyed. You know; caves are dark, warm ("You're caving in winter! It will be freezing!" Seriously, people; learn some geology) and full of bats. How could I not like them? Janolan is a huge tourist attraction; they run tours of the caves at certain times, and you have to book. We didn't get there until after 1pm, and the next avaliable tour with free places was of the Temple of Baal at 2:30. There are a bunch of 'show caves' at Janolan that are all lit up (trivia: Janolan was the first place to light its caves with electric lights) with well-caved walkways and so forth. Baal is one of those, and it was pretty ******** cool; full of, like, twisty rock formations and big sheets of calcium carbonite with names like 'The Angel's Wing' and 'The Red and White Altars'. The Temple is named from the Biblical story, and the guide pointed out all the features to us. Poor ol' Baal; he was a pretty innocuous diety from Carthage that kind of got raped in Judeo-Christian texts, and is now forced to live out eternity as a weird-looking stalagmite scaring kids on cave tours. I guess there are worse fates for a god; personally I thought the stalagmite looked more like Cthulhu, but maybe that's just me. Of course, get two geeks walking into a cave called the Temple of Baal and you're bound to wind up with a bunch of Baldur's Gate and WoW jokes. Back in the '50s, the Temple was considered to be a good enough tourist drawcard for the Trust to blast a direct passageway to it; previously it was only accessable after a 'four-hour' hike through the Lucas and River caves. The passage is pretty much just that, dynamited through the mountain and sealed off with three airlock doors (to prevent the outside air from polluting the very deep cave). Anyway, nothing makes a WoW-geek feel like they're about to enter an instance like waiting in front of a door in a cave with twenty other people. Despite not assigning any tanks or healing rotations, the group leader did a good job and we got through the whole instance with no wipes.
I could spend a whole holiday at the caves, I think, but by the time we got out it was after 4, so we walked back to the car and drove back to the apartment. The carpark, incidentally, we a good ten minute hike up a hill away; the next time I go to Janolan I'm taking a bus, seriously.
And that's pretty much it, I think. The next day -- ie. today -- we got up early and headed home. I could totally go back to the Blue Mountains. There's so much stuff there that we didn't see; lots more caves, for starters, and bushwalks (must find out about tick/leech status). I think mum is plotting going back up there at some stage in the future; she and dad went recently, but she spent the entire weekend stuck inside at a conference, so I think she's a bit jealous. I'd totally go back with mum; we could get up early and go walking while dad and :userwombat: stay at the hotel and sleep. Heh.
I totally used my phone to check my email while I was away, too. I didn't need that $10, really...
Ixxis · Sun Jun 25, 2006 @ 01:49pm · 1 Comments |
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