Blue Mountains

Just got back from our trip to the Blue Mountains! It was amazing. We got up early Saturday morning and took a bus to Sydney and then a train to Katoomba which is a little mountain town with small shops and access to hiking trails! We got there at about 1:30 on Saturday, checked into our hostel, and decided to do some exploring. We walked up to a spot called Echo Point and decided to do an hour hike to try and see Katoomba Falls. Unfortunately, they were farther away than the signs said so instead of going all the way there we decided to go to Katoomba Cascades and then back to see the "3 Sisters." The 3 sisters are extremely famous and have a lookout spot that is incredible.  After we did saw them and took tons of pictures, we headed back to town for pizza and called it an early night.  Sunday we got up at 7:15 and started hiking the trails by 8:20.  The goal was to get to an area called the "Ruined Castle" which is the remnants of where one giant mountain used to span across but is now broken into 3 parts, with the middle section being just a mountain with some giant rocks at the top (called the ruined castle)! It was a 6.8km walk each way and part of it was across a landslide which was awesome! The birds were crazy and we were actually in the rain forest which was amazing! In the beginning we passed the Katoomba Falls that we had skipped the day before, then we got to an area that has a railway that is supposedly the steepest one in the whole world: http://www.scenicworld.com.au/rides/scenic-railway-en.  We continued on and passed over the landslide and through a trail called Federal Pass which got us to the outlet for the Ruined Castle! When we got to the top, we mistakenly stopped too early and had lunch next to what we "thought" was the Ruined Castle. Nick took a walk around the area to explore and came back only to tell us that we hadn't actually made it there...whoops. So we finished up (after trying to make a very unsuccessful fire) and went to the actual Ruined Castle. (Meanwhile we had already taken tons of pictures and climbed to the top of the fake one).  The real one was gigantic compared to the fake one and we all climbed to the very top and it was incredible! You could see directly across to the spot where we had been the day before taking pictures of the 3 Sisters, and all around the Blue Mountains area.  We ended up staying at the top for about and hour and a half, then headed back and took the Scenic Railway back to the top! It was way steeper than we were expecting and actually kind of scary! (Also saved us about 45 minutes of walking up steps which I was not complaining about). From the top of the railway, we headed back to the train station and caught the 4PM bus to Sydney where we met up with our friend Jade who was visiting her family there for the weekend, checked out a lights show called Vivid Lights where they shine cool pictures and scenes on the Opera House, and finished up some final souvenir shopping! It was safe to say that by the end of that, we were completely dead so grabbed the bus back to Newcastle and got settled back in by around midnight! It was one of my favorite weekends here and it's crazy that now we are down to only 2 weeks left in Australia!