Weekend in the Blue Mountains
We finally managed to get out and see a bit of Oz last weekend: the Blue Mountains, just outside Sydney. One thing crossed off our list of places to go!
We travelled down Friday evening. I met Sean at Mount Druitt at the end of his working day and we drove on to the Blue Mountains. Mount Druitt is about mid-way between where we live (i.e. central Sydney) and the Blue Mountains. It's probably slightly closer to the mountains in distance but because you have to come off the motorway it takes a little longer to get out there.
We stayed in the Hydro Majestic, which is a turn of the century (i.e. 19th -> 20th) hotel that has recently been refurbished. It was quite expensive for Aussie prices, but we chose it because it seemed to have a nice lounge (in fact it had several) and a decent restaurant.
We were a little disappointed with the restaurant on the first night mainly because the selection was quite small although my soup, despite being very hot (which is indispensable), was not particularly exciting and neither was the pilaff that came with my fish. Sean's crab ravioli and venison was very nice though, and I can confirm this because (owing to the limited menu) I had the same thing on Sunday night. My dessert of millefeuille was very poor. It was described as chocolate mousse between layers of puff pastry and this is exactly what is was. Neither of the ingredients was anything to write home about.
Still all was forgiven at breakfast as I think I can declare without any doubt that this was the best hotel buffet breakfast I have ever had. They had whole fresh fruit (apples and oranges), stewed fruit (this turned out to be less interesting), some tinned fruit, a fresh fruit platter (mainly melon and pineapple), fruit yoghurt and home-made muffins. The home-made muffins (blueberry or chocolate) were gorgeous, I can't tell you the number of times I have been disappointed by hotel breakfast buffet muffins. They also had a whole load of stuff I didn't get round to trying (cold meat, pastries, hot breakfast). But the best thing of all was a 1960s waffle machine, in which you could make your own waffles.
Saturday: It rains.
Rain was pelting down on Friday night as we drove to the Blue Mountains but, ever the optimist, I expected it to stop when we woke up on Saturday.
Sure enough, the first thing we did notice when we looked out of the window on Saturday morning was not rain. However, it wasn't anything else either. The whole of the mountains were completely covered in mist. On closer examination it was also drizzling.
We abandoned plans of going on exciting walks around the mountains and went into Katoomba, the main town, to see what was there. We went to a tea room and chocolate shop that I had found on the internet and found a fantastic bookshop. The man at the counter remarked on the variety of books we were buying: Sean had found a backgammon book, a gambling book and is trying to learn statistics and so had a statistics book as well, whereas I had added some classic novels to the mix. In general the selection of games and backgammon books was very good in all the bookshops we visited in the Blue Mountains; I have no idea why this should be.
Bookshop
The rain got heavier. We went back to the hotel.
We were still recovering from having had to work all week so we had afternoon tea (very good) and then went to sleep before having a late dinner at 9pm. I had a big disappointment that evening - I ordered fish of the day (which was salmon) only to be presented with the same baby barramundi that I had had on Friday. I mentioned this to the waiter, who offered to change it but said the wait would be 20 minutes (we didn't have time). On the plus side, it was prepared differently and was actually very tasty, and I was further reassured by the waiter coming over to apologise (he had clearly been hunted down and told to make amends). The chef came out and spoke to us at the end of the meal, which was also comforting.
We watched the England match in our room - no one was watching it in the lounge and we didn't want to disturb them. The match started at 11pm our time. I can't imagine that anyone who is reading this doesn't know what the result was....
Sunday: It drizzles.
We were more determined to try a walk today, but when we set out in the car it was drizzling and (albeit less than yesterday) misty. On our way to Leura where the chosen walk was to start, we found a scenic blue mountains circular road and decided that maybe we would have a little drive instead. We found Echo Point this way, which gives a good view of the three sisters rocks. We parked the car and got out to have a quick look. It stopped drizzling and we ended up embarking on a walk (all the tracks are clearly marked so it's very easy to go on impromptu rather than planned walks as long as you don't mind sharing your route with other tourists) but we had to turn back quite soon as we'd only put enough money in the parking meter for an hour.
The "Three Sisters" rock formation
We went and had a wander round Leura next. Leura was less interesting than Katoomba (one small bookshop: we bought a copy of the latest Eoin Colfer book on CD) and what's more all the tea shops were jam packed with tourists leaving no room for us. We had to go back to the hotel to have tea.
We had an early dinner so we could go and watch the England versus Australia rugby friendly (billed in Australia as World Cup grudge match); Sean needed to know what happened for Staff Ribbing (either giving or receiving) on Tuesday.
The fish was baby barramundi (again) so I had the crab ravioli and venison (Sean's meal on Friday), which were both excellent. For dessert I ordered Strawberry Romanov, which I was expecting to be a kind of French tarte aux fraises but turned out to be strawberries and cream in a pastry basket. It was surprisingly nice considering. The service was quite slow (overall it was very variable, we got off early on Saturday for the football but everything came much slower tonight) and we missed the first 25 minutes of the rugby. Another quirk of the service was exposed: I had noticed that some guests seemed to receive canopes (and I thought I even saw one couple with a bread basket, but maybe they ordered that) but I assumed that they were on a more expensive package (or maybe not on a package at all). However, on Sunday evening we were seated further into the main restaurant and received cucumber with horse radish cream (these were not too bad considering I don't like horse radish or cucumber, but they seemed to cancel each other out). We seemed to have been upgraded.
England were slaughtered in the rugby (the ribbing will be directed at Sean rather than coming from him). I think the final score was 36-3 or something similar.
Monday: The sun shines and we realise what we have been missing.
We had been told that the views from the hotel were spectacular. We had not seen any evidence of this - up until now it had appeared that the view from all windows was remarkable similar to the view from an aeroplane window when passing through a cloud.
On Monday morning the sun was shining and all the mists had cleared. The view was amazing.
View from the hotel window
We went out and attempted to follow a planned walk but we got distracted again. While driving to the start point, we passed a sign saying Katoomba Falls and went to investigate. We we ended up following a guided walk down the mountain (and underneath the waterfall) for about two hours. Ahead of us were some American teenage boys, who jumped the safety railing to investigate whenever possible, including at the top of the waterfall where the fall was pretty large. You can see them in the next photo. Look for the small white blobs.
Small American boys and large waterfall
Spurred on by this, Sean jumped a barrier at the bottom of the waterfall to have his picture taken a bit closer.
Sean behind the barriers
We then found we could continue for another 2 hours on the walk. Strangely enough it turned out to be the walk we were planning on going on; we had just started at the other end. This was immensely fortunate as we had started at the interesting end and gone down some very steep steps. We did not intend to re-ascend the steps; we got the scenic railway back up to the top.
Scenic railway
We stopped in Katoomba on the way back and perused another (not quite as good but still pretty satisfying) bookshop. Sean found a backgammon book by Barclay Cooke, an Economics text book by Stiglitz (for me) at a bargainous price of $5.50 and I selected the collected works of Milton and a more modern poetry book by Mailer. I haven't read any poetry for ages and this looked quite exciting.
When we got back to the hotel, we read by the fire in the lounge until dinner. I was still on Notre-Dame de Paris by Hugo, which I had bought at the first bookshop. I haven't been reading many novels recently (too busy trying to improve myself) and this was a classic page turner. Why are non-fiction books not like this?
I had booked the last night as an addition to the original booking as I had thought it would be easiest to go back to Sydney on Monday. It turned out that Sydney was quite a long way away and we were better off getting up early and going straight to work Tuesday morning (I got the train back from Mount Druitt). When I booked this extra night, I was given a cheaper B&B price so I went for that.
Given that we were not booked into the hotel and had already made a dent in the limited menu we made a vague effort to go to a new restaurant, in particular a modern Australian and a French restaurant. There was no answer from either (perhaps because of the Bank Holiday) and we resigned ourselves to eating at the hotel. There were advantages to this: we had to be up very early on Tuesday. The food was not bad either, I had pasta with prosciutto and sun dried tomatoes, followed by a good piece of steak and Sean went back to the classic crab/venison combination.
We got up very early Tuesday morning (only 15 minutes in advance of when we would get up usually but it seemed earlier as we were on holiday), missed breakfast (oh poor muffinless me) and made it back in time for Sean to start work at 8:30am. We both had a great weekend and are planning on going back. Hopefully it will be sunny for the whole holiday next time!
We finally managed to get out and see a bit of Oz last weekend: the Blue Mountains, just outside Sydney. One thing crossed off our list of places to go!
We travelled down Friday evening. I met Sean at Mount Druitt at the end of his working day and we drove on to the Blue Mountains. Mount Druitt is about mid-way between where we live (i.e. central Sydney) and the Blue Mountains. It's probably slightly closer to the mountains in distance but because you have to come off the motorway it takes a little longer to get out there.
We stayed in the Hydro Majestic, which is a turn of the century (i.e. 19th -> 20th) hotel that has recently been refurbished. It was quite expensive for Aussie prices, but we chose it because it seemed to have a nice lounge (in fact it had several) and a decent restaurant.
We were a little disappointed with the restaurant on the first night mainly because the selection was quite small although my soup, despite being very hot (which is indispensable), was not particularly exciting and neither was the pilaff that came with my fish. Sean's crab ravioli and venison was very nice though, and I can confirm this because (owing to the limited menu) I had the same thing on Sunday night. My dessert of millefeuille was very poor. It was described as chocolate mousse between layers of puff pastry and this is exactly what is was. Neither of the ingredients was anything to write home about.
Still all was forgiven at breakfast as I think I can declare without any doubt that this was the best hotel buffet breakfast I have ever had. They had whole fresh fruit (apples and oranges), stewed fruit (this turned out to be less interesting), some tinned fruit, a fresh fruit platter (mainly melon and pineapple), fruit yoghurt and home-made muffins. The home-made muffins (blueberry or chocolate) were gorgeous, I can't tell you the number of times I have been disappointed by hotel breakfast buffet muffins. They also had a whole load of stuff I didn't get round to trying (cold meat, pastries, hot breakfast). But the best thing of all was a 1960s waffle machine, in which you could make your own waffles.
Saturday: It rains.
Rain was pelting down on Friday night as we drove to the Blue Mountains but, ever the optimist, I expected it to stop when we woke up on Saturday.
Sure enough, the first thing we did notice when we looked out of the window on Saturday morning was not rain. However, it wasn't anything else either. The whole of the mountains were completely covered in mist. On closer examination it was also drizzling.
We abandoned plans of going on exciting walks around the mountains and went into Katoomba, the main town, to see what was there. We went to a tea room and chocolate shop that I had found on the internet and found a fantastic bookshop. The man at the counter remarked on the variety of books we were buying: Sean had found a backgammon book, a gambling book and is trying to learn statistics and so had a statistics book as well, whereas I had added some classic novels to the mix. In general the selection of games and backgammon books was very good in all the bookshops we visited in the Blue Mountains; I have no idea why this should be.
Bookshop
The rain got heavier. We went back to the hotel.
We were still recovering from having had to work all week so we had afternoon tea (very good) and then went to sleep before having a late dinner at 9pm. I had a big disappointment that evening - I ordered fish of the day (which was salmon) only to be presented with the same baby barramundi that I had had on Friday. I mentioned this to the waiter, who offered to change it but said the wait would be 20 minutes (we didn't have time). On the plus side, it was prepared differently and was actually very tasty, and I was further reassured by the waiter coming over to apologise (he had clearly been hunted down and told to make amends). The chef came out and spoke to us at the end of the meal, which was also comforting.
We watched the England match in our room - no one was watching it in the lounge and we didn't want to disturb them. The match started at 11pm our time. I can't imagine that anyone who is reading this doesn't know what the result was....
Sunday: It drizzles.
We were more determined to try a walk today, but when we set out in the car it was drizzling and (albeit less than yesterday) misty. On our way to Leura where the chosen walk was to start, we found a scenic blue mountains circular road and decided that maybe we would have a little drive instead. We found Echo Point this way, which gives a good view of the three sisters rocks. We parked the car and got out to have a quick look. It stopped drizzling and we ended up embarking on a walk (all the tracks are clearly marked so it's very easy to go on impromptu rather than planned walks as long as you don't mind sharing your route with other tourists) but we had to turn back quite soon as we'd only put enough money in the parking meter for an hour.
The "Three Sisters" rock formation
We went and had a wander round Leura next. Leura was less interesting than Katoomba (one small bookshop: we bought a copy of the latest Eoin Colfer book on CD) and what's more all the tea shops were jam packed with tourists leaving no room for us. We had to go back to the hotel to have tea.
We had an early dinner so we could go and watch the England versus Australia rugby friendly (billed in Australia as World Cup grudge match); Sean needed to know what happened for Staff Ribbing (either giving or receiving) on Tuesday.
The fish was baby barramundi (again) so I had the crab ravioli and venison (Sean's meal on Friday), which were both excellent. For dessert I ordered Strawberry Romanov, which I was expecting to be a kind of French tarte aux fraises but turned out to be strawberries and cream in a pastry basket. It was surprisingly nice considering. The service was quite slow (overall it was very variable, we got off early on Saturday for the football but everything came much slower tonight) and we missed the first 25 minutes of the rugby. Another quirk of the service was exposed: I had noticed that some guests seemed to receive canopes (and I thought I even saw one couple with a bread basket, but maybe they ordered that) but I assumed that they were on a more expensive package (or maybe not on a package at all). However, on Sunday evening we were seated further into the main restaurant and received cucumber with horse radish cream (these were not too bad considering I don't like horse radish or cucumber, but they seemed to cancel each other out). We seemed to have been upgraded.
England were slaughtered in the rugby (the ribbing will be directed at Sean rather than coming from him). I think the final score was 36-3 or something similar.
Monday: The sun shines and we realise what we have been missing.
We had been told that the views from the hotel were spectacular. We had not seen any evidence of this - up until now it had appeared that the view from all windows was remarkable similar to the view from an aeroplane window when passing through a cloud.
On Monday morning the sun was shining and all the mists had cleared. The view was amazing.
View from the hotel window
We went out and attempted to follow a planned walk but we got distracted again. While driving to the start point, we passed a sign saying Katoomba Falls and went to investigate. We we ended up following a guided walk down the mountain (and underneath the waterfall) for about two hours. Ahead of us were some American teenage boys, who jumped the safety railing to investigate whenever possible, including at the top of the waterfall where the fall was pretty large. You can see them in the next photo. Look for the small white blobs.
Small American boys and large waterfall
Spurred on by this, Sean jumped a barrier at the bottom of the waterfall to have his picture taken a bit closer.
Sean behind the barriers
We then found we could continue for another 2 hours on the walk. Strangely enough it turned out to be the walk we were planning on going on; we had just started at the other end. This was immensely fortunate as we had started at the interesting end and gone down some very steep steps. We did not intend to re-ascend the steps; we got the scenic railway back up to the top.
Scenic railway
We stopped in Katoomba on the way back and perused another (not quite as good but still pretty satisfying) bookshop. Sean found a backgammon book by Barclay Cooke, an Economics text book by Stiglitz (for me) at a bargainous price of $5.50 and I selected the collected works of Milton and a more modern poetry book by Mailer. I haven't read any poetry for ages and this looked quite exciting.
When we got back to the hotel, we read by the fire in the lounge until dinner. I was still on Notre-Dame de Paris by Hugo, which I had bought at the first bookshop. I haven't been reading many novels recently (too busy trying to improve myself) and this was a classic page turner. Why are non-fiction books not like this?
I had booked the last night as an addition to the original booking as I had thought it would be easiest to go back to Sydney on Monday. It turned out that Sydney was quite a long way away and we were better off getting up early and going straight to work Tuesday morning (I got the train back from Mount Druitt). When I booked this extra night, I was given a cheaper B&B price so I went for that.
Given that we were not booked into the hotel and had already made a dent in the limited menu we made a vague effort to go to a new restaurant, in particular a modern Australian and a French restaurant. There was no answer from either (perhaps because of the Bank Holiday) and we resigned ourselves to eating at the hotel. There were advantages to this: we had to be up very early on Tuesday. The food was not bad either, I had pasta with prosciutto and sun dried tomatoes, followed by a good piece of steak and Sean went back to the classic crab/venison combination.
We got up very early Tuesday morning (only 15 minutes in advance of when we would get up usually but it seemed earlier as we were on holiday), missed breakfast (oh poor muffinless me) and made it back in time for Sean to start work at 8:30am. We both had a great weekend and are planning on going back. Hopefully it will be sunny for the whole holiday next time!
posted by Zoe at 5:16 PM
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