Friday 9/4

The bed in this unit is nowhere as comfortable as the one in Queensland but we managed to get some sleep before being fully awake at 6:45am (otherwise known as OMG-it's-still-way-too-dark-o'clock). We all had breakfast while we continued our discussion of what we wanted to see while in Sydney. The final decision was that we would head out to the Blue Mountains to see the Three Sisters and whatever else took our fancy while we were there.

We arrived in Katoomba in time for morning tea at 10:45, after negotiating enough roadworks to rebuild an entire third world country's road system. We managed to find two bakeries in the main street so the kids had a hefty dose of sugar treat each then we went out to Echo Point to view the rock formation known as the Three Sisters.

As all things are apt to do, the area had changed dramatically from what Peter and I remembered from our childhood visits. The lookouts are actually safe now! We took a lot of photos then decided to take a drive along the tourist scenic route in hopes of finding somewhere nice to have lunch.

We stopped at Leura Cascades which, at first glance, appeared to be a drain 'cascading' into a very small creek. Turns out that that was the rainwater run-off from the road and the actual cascades were about 1.3kms down a hiking track. Seeing as my twisted knee was still giving me plentiful amounts of grief, we walked a small distance along the track and found this little cascade before turning back to the car.

We finished the tourist drive and went over to Scenic World to check out the 'rides'. Had a look around the rather extensive souvenir shop and left without buying anything or taking any of the rides. Managed to get this lovely photo though:

On our way back to Sydney, we stopped at a little roadside stall selling, of all things, ugg boots and cow hides. Peter wanted to buy a cow hide rug for the 'country estate' but I managed to talk him out of it on the grounds that shipping it back to Perth would cost as much as the rug. I liked the design of some of the pieced rugs but resisted the temptation, satisfying myself with a picture instead:

One of our main reasons for coming to Sydney was to show the boys where their dad grew up so, seeing as it was still quite early, we headed for North Ryde. Peter had a great time showing the boys his old haunts: where his house was (it has been demolished and replaced with a set of units), the old corner shop (also no longer there), the lane way he walked through to get to high school, the six-lane highway he had to cross to get to high school (complete with a fence down the middle to discourage pedestrians which he, of course, just jumped over daily!) and his primary school. The high school has been demolished but here's a photo of him in front of the primary school:

Grown up just a little bit since the last time he was here!

After that trip down memory lane, and a few wrong turns down other streets, we asked the GPS to get us 'home'. It directed us through the city at the beginnings of peak hour and we ended up going through the Harbour Tunnel, as well as almost every other tunnel possible! At least the kids can say they've been under Sydney Harbour but it took us 1.5 hours to get home. The GPS doesn't work in tunnels so we nearly ended up taking exits to heaven-knows-where on more than one occasion!

Once we got 'home', we had to find parking (in the car wash bay again!), then had a quiet dinner and were all in bed by 9pm. All in all though, a very good day out.